ENGLAND were presented with the Ashes urn this week following a 3-0 series victory over Australia.
Did you see it? I’m guessing you did, even if the umpires at The Oval obviously didn’t think the light was good enough for you to do so.
To recap, play in the fifth and final Test was halted due to bad light with England needing just 21 more runs from 24 balls to record a 4-0 victory.
Boos echoed around the ground from the crowd and can you blame them?
They’d paid good money to watch the match and were on the verge of witnessing Alastair Cook’s men secure another win.
It was an entertaining finale.
Sport, after all, is an entertainment business.
Which is why it should have been allowed to continue.
It’s not as if the ground was shrouded in darkness because the floodlights were already on, so why not just leave them on?
There was a similar situation at the end of the fourth Test at Durham, which came perilously close to going into a fifth day for England to get the final wicket because the light was also deemed iffy.
Of course, player safety has to be taken into account but with so much at stake a bit of common sense wouldn’t have gone amiss.
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