Afghanistan coach Jonathan Trott says that he was not properly informed about how to complete the victory in the preliminary round of the Asia Cup one-day cricket tournament against Sri Lanka, which was the reason for his defeat as well as his failure to qualify for the Super Four round.
He further said that he did not know the number of overs needed to win the match. But in talking about this fact, can the team management, coach, internal staff and team captain and other players get away with the defeat? If they are not aware of the rules of the cricket book as well as the rules of the Asia Cup tournament, it is a proper fulfillment of their responsibility.
Obviously, when calculating the net run rate, it is a general fact that all the runs scored before the winning run is taken into consideration. It means that if the number of runs needed to win is 292, if the scoreboard is 291 and the batsman hits a 6 and raises the total to 297, the average score is calculated considering the total number of runs to be 297. When divided by the number of overs that have been sent by that time, it is the average of the number of overs received.
The net run rate is a different matter. When calculating the net run rate, one team adds all the runs scored in all the matches they have participated in and divides it by the sum of all the overs faced by their team. In this case, if the team does not face the allotted number of overs and all the batsmen are out in a lesser number of overs, then the team is considered to have faced the entire number of overs. The meaning of this is that if a team is bowled out for 100 runs in 25 overs in a 50 over match, the average score in that innings is not 4 runs but 2 runs per over.
This is a simple fact that anyone knows. It is not that the Afghanistan managers did not know this. Also, calculating the net run rate is not that difficult. However, it was a significant mistake on their part to neglect to calculate the run rate required by their team in this unfortunate match. The result was Afghanistan being thrown out of the tournament. The team manager and staff are responsible for that. But in this special match, Afghanistan thought that in order to defeat the Sri Lankan team, they should achieve their target in 37.1 overs. Even so, they had that opportunity till 38 overs.
However, this is the nature of cricket.
