Weather halts Pakistan’s progress in T20 World Cup as US-Ireland game is abandoned

India, USA move to Super 8

When luck deserts you, nothing helps. And it becomes all the more agonizing and painful when even nature turns against you and wreaks havoc with your hopes and dreams. This is exactly what is happening to Pakistan cricket team playing in the T20 World Cup.
As a result created a history becoming the first ever debutant side to make the Super 8 round with five points from four games keeping Ireland at the bottom while pushing Pakistan out of contention of the knockout round.
All Pakistani prayers went unanswered and inevitable has happened. Both Ireland and Pakistan have been knocked out of the tournament and India and USA make it to the Super 8 round from this group. The remaining games in the group would be played as scheduled as they would have no bearing on the Super 8 round.
While eight matches were played at Nassau County International Cricket Stadium, four games – Nepal vs Sri Lanka (June 11), USA vs Ireland (June 14), Canada vs India (June 15) and Ireland vs Pakistan (June 16) – were allotted to Central Broward Park & Broward County Stadium, Lauderhill, Florida. Since it is Monsoon season, Florida is known to be hit by thunderstorms and heavy rains during late June and early July months.
The Lauderhill venue is the most established US cricket venue, having opened in 2007 as an arena dedicated to the sport. It hosted the country’s first T20 international match when New Zealand took on Sri Lanka in 2010. The USA played its first one-day international series here in 2019. The stadium, which was constructed at a cost of $70m, has a capacity of 25,000 people.
Though Pakistan had no game scheduled for today, eyes of all Pakistani players, officials and fans were glued on the Ireland-USA match. The future of Pakistan in the tournament hinged on the outcome of this game. And things did not work the ways many Pakistanis prayed and wanted. The miracle, they thought would happen, refused to come.
Pakistan was hoping against hope as the chances of the match to begin were bleak as the state of Florida, where Lauderhill is situated, has been hit by a tropical thunderstorm, leading to incessant rain and flash flooding.
As ill luck would have it, Florida has been through a series of vagaries of weather for the past few days. Thunderstorms have put the normal life out of gear. Even some teams which were to fly out of Florida had to stay put because of delay or cancellation of flights.
There were a series of inspections of soggy outfield before the toss to this crucial USA-Ireland crucial Group A T20 World Cup match could be held. Though the match was scheduled to start at 10.30 am, it had to be abandoned as all attempts by the organisers, including vacuum sucking of moisture from outfield, proved insufficient to make the play possible.
Pakistan was keeping an eye on this match since a defeat for USA would have kept them in hunt for a place in the Super Eight stage. And USA needed only a point to make its historic entry to the Super 8 round thus becoming the first debutant team to qualify for the knockout round.
Had USA lost then Pakistan would have targeted a huge win against the Irish side in its last group game to overtake the Americans and progress to the Super Eight stage.
USA are now placed second in the points table with five points from four games, while Ireland are placed at the bottom with an abandoned game and two losses from three games.
Pakistan are placed third with one win from three games, while India lead the group with an all-win record from three matches.
Teams that could not take the field
Ireland: Paul Stirling (c), Mark Adair, Ross Adair, Andrew Balbirnie, Curtis Campher, Gareth Delany, George Dockrell, Graham Hume, Josh Little, Barry McCarthy, Neil Rock, Harry Tector, Lorcan Tucker, Ben White, Craig Young.
USA: Monank Patel (c), Aaron Jones, Andries Gous, Corey Anderson, Ali Khan, Harmeet Singh, Jessy Singh, Milind Kumar, Nisarg Patel, Nitish Kumar, NoshtushKenjige, Saurabh Nethralvakar, Shadley Van Schalkwyk, Steven Taylor, Shayan Jahangir. Reserve Players: Gajanand Singh, Juanoy Drysdale, Yasir Mohammad.