While the historic Afghanistan vs New Zealand one-off Test match was scheduled to get underway on Monday (September 9) at Greater Noida's Shaheed Vijay Singh Pathik Stadium, the first four days of the Test match have already been callled off without a ball being bowled.
While the weather has indeed played its part in delaying the Test match, details that have come up so far also show mismanagement and lack of facilities at the venue. However, the Greater Noida Stadium manager has defended the venue and blamed the Afghanistan Cricket Board (ACB) instead.
'Rain Is Causing Major Trouble Which Isn’t In Our Hands'
"The Afghanistan team had arrived on 30 August and they played a 3-day (intra-squad) match from 1-2 September where they scored more than 300 runs. We delivered the pitch as per coach Jonathan Trott’s demand," a person supposed to be one of the stadium managers told 93.5 Red FM.
"The rain is causing the major trouble which isn’t in our hands. The closest stadium to this one is Delhi (Arun Jaitley Stadium) where the downpour has resulted in the cancellation of (DPL 2024) matches. The showers are so heavy that the water penetrates the covers despite enveloping the entire ground," the person added.
While the Radio Jockey was quick to chip in with the fact that Afghanistan have played more cricket at this venue than Team India and should be aware of the conditions pretty well, the so-called venue manager said that people need content and nothing can be done.
"Jitna to humari team nahi kheli, itna to inhone khela hai (the Indian cricket team has never played but the Afghans did)," the radio host said to which the person representative of the venue responded: "Kuch logon ko content chahiye hotein hain, unko reality nahi jaan na he (People just need content and don’t want to know the reality)."