How Colombo's monsoons put a dampener on NZ's best laid plans

NAVI MUMBAI: In the last week or so, New Zealand captain Sophie Devine was seen playing with a mosquito bat in the dressing room at the RS Premadasa Stadium in Colombo and a sparkler, a type of firecracker, during Deepavali celebrations here in the city. But not so much with the bat.

In fact, the last time Devine walked out to bat for New Zealand in this World Cup was on October 10 in Guwahati against Bangladesh. Since then, two of New Zealand's matches against Sri Lanka and Pakistan were abandoned before the White Ferns had the chance to bat.

Understandably, Devine was not pleased after the last match against Pakistan on Saturday. “It's extremely frustrating, let's be honest. You wait four years for a World Cup, and to have to suffer through the rain. I hope that in future editions, they think of playing earlier in the day. We have seen the rain come in the evening, so play at 10 or 11 AM. For the game to be scuppered by rain is a real shame for me,” Devine had said.

It has been the story when it comes to the Colombo leg of the tournament. With Pakistan not travelling to India due to the political tensions between the two countries, Colombo was selected to host their games and a few others. However, out of the ten games in Colombo so far, four have returned no results. Pakistan, New Zealand, and Sri Lanka (two each), Australia and England (one each) have all faced issues in Sri Lanka while South Africa have had to endure two shortened games.

All this has meant that the scheduling has come under criticism. After all, it is the regular monsoon season in Sri Lanka, and rains are seasonal. Even during the men’s Asia Cup two years ago, several games were affected by monsoon rains, with a few games being shifted to different venues. “Wait, it’s not is it? It can’t be? Raining in Colombo during rainy season??? Who would have thought it…,” former England spinner and broadcaster Alex Hartley posted on social media.

South Africa all-rounder Nadine de Klerk shared the frustration. “No, it's very frustrating,” she told this daily. “I've seen a lot of things going on about the choice of place and with the monsoon and all of that. I totally agree. The ODI World Cup is won only once every four years. I think we were lucky enough to get the game against Sri Lanka the other day, which was great. We got the two points. If there's like half of the games raining out, it just doesn't make the contest fair. So it's been very frustrating, especially since you can't prepare the way you want it because there's been rain around.

“Even for us, we've had a few cancelled training sessions. You're sitting in the change rooms for hours just to get a game in. We were lucky enough to get a game, but some other teams weren't that lucky. Like I said, it's such a big tournament. You want to play every single game; every two points matter. It's just been a bit frustrating that it's kind of had to end up this way. I really feel for the teams that had two or three rain out games. I mean, almost half of their campaign rained out, which I think really hurts the team,” de Klerk added.

And no one knows it better than Devine and New Zealand as they now have to win the remaining two games to qualify for the semifinals. However, the New Zealand captain was in better spirits on Wednesday evening. “We just wanted to play cricket, and I think that's really important to reiterate. We just want to be playing games of cricket. For us, absolutely, it's frustrating, but we're really excited we're here now. We've needed to move on, and we've done that as a team, and we know exactly where our path leads us and what we have to do to achieve that,” she said.

When informed there were forecasts for rain on Thursday evening in Navi Mumbai, she let out a chuckle. “I’m not surprised, to be honest. I expect there to be rain everywhere we go at the moment,” she laughed, before adding, “but you can't control the weather. We'll deal with it if it comes. There's no point worrying about it. I mean, yeah, I'm sure most teams have got about seven different weather apps and the rain radar. You're trying to talk to the ground staff and try and get as much insight as you can, but until it actually falls down and the umpires call you off, we're just focused on what we want to do. Hopefully, getting a full hundred overs of cricket would be really nice.”

While only time will tell whether a full hundred overs of cricket is possible on Thursday, it is clear that the Colombo leg of the tournament has put a damper on White Ferns’ campaign and the World Cup.

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