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It looks like the Hot Weather tournament in Delhi faced significant challenges due to rain from Thursday night onwards, which ultimately led to matches being called off and decisions being made hastily, such as using toss of coin to determine winners instead of attempting to reschedule matches.
Incessant rain affected the tournament, causing matches to be cancelled or shortened. This impacted prominent teams like Indian Airforce and Madras Club, who were knocked out due to poor planning.
The Delhi & District Cricket Association organises this tournament with 50 top clubs on a knock-out basis. While the tournament is running behind schedule, the knock-out games were supposed to be played with a reserve day and the final is supposed to be held on July 1.
Despite having provisions for a reserve day and even a shortened game format (15-over side), the decision was made to resort to a toss of coin to decide winners rather than attempting to play the matches under adjusted conditions.
The tournament committee’s handling of the situation has come under severe criticism with accusations about the lackadaisical attitude among some committee members. Funnily, the tournament committee members informed the clubs early in the morning on Friday that the matches were called off. Before noon, the teams were told to come to DDCA for the toss of the coin in presence of league committee members and other reputed international umpires, which all the four clubs who were playing the quarter-finals obliged.
Two venues were supposed to host the games — one was Modern School ground and the other one was Mohan Meakins ground in Ghaziabad. Incidentally, Modern ground was not fit to host a game due to wet conditions while Mohan Meakins was ready to have a shortened version, but there were no teams on the field.
That is because the DDCA officials announced early in the morning that matches were not possible. On Thursday, DDCA also had a meeting to this effect and a very prominent office-bearer made a point to ensure matches happen rather than rushing through the tournament for the sake of it. But who cares?
But what happened in the end better teams are going to lose out playing premier tournaments like the Hot Weather Tournament. The better players are going to miss out, which will make this kind of league less competitive. This has raised concerns about fairness and the competitiveness of the tournament among participating clubs and players.
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