Bizarre events highlight the first West Indies-Australia T20I

Megan Schutt delivered a length ball and Britney Cooper failed to make any connection when attempting a wild hoick, losing her stumps as a result. Soon enough captain Stafanie Taylor had walked out to the middle.

Yet, there was a halt. A rather longish one. It appeared to be one of those extended drinks break that accompanies the fall of a wicket. Except that it wasn’t.

The ground staff had walked out to the centre, had a long chat with the umpires, exited and entered a few minutes later again with the measuring tape in hand.

The fielding restrictions for women’s T20Is state that, “Two semi-circles shall be drawn on the field of play. The semi-circles shall have as their centre the middle stump at either end of the pitch. The radius of each of the semi-circles shall be 25.15 yards (23 metres)…”

For the men’s version, the radius of the semi-circle is 30 yards (27.43 metres).

At the Kensington Oval, in the first T20I between West Indies and Australia, the circles had been in place at a radius of 30 yards instead of the normal 25.15 yards.

“Jess Jonassen came up to me and said she felt like she was really deep. So I just asked the umpire,” said Meg Lanning, captain of Australia. “When we had a look at it, it was a couple of metres deep like the men’s circle.”

That halted play for a good five to six minutes. However, that wasn’t the end of it.

On the last ball of the first over, Stafanie Taylor tapped one towards backward point and set off for a run. Jonassen, stationed there, got to the ball quickly and hurled a throw to Alyssa Healy, the wicket-keeper, who did the rest.

Kyshona Knight seemed short of her ground and the Aussies began celebrating. But they realised that Knight wasn’t walking back and the umpire seemed to be unmoved as well. The on-air commentators wondered if the umpire was aware that he didn’t have a TV umpire to refer it to.

When the Australians enquired the reason, the umpire was heard on the stump microphone, saying, “I didn’t hear you appealing…” The tourists appealed again and then the finger was raised.

When asked about the confusion, Lanning explained, “She (Knight) was out, but the umpire thought we hadn’t appealed and hence hadn’t given her out.”

“We didn’t do a massive appeal but did definitely appeal,” she asserted.

Rain, bad light, spectator running on to the field – to go with these reasons, add a couple more: wrong field measurements and the umpire unable to hear the appeal to the list of things which halt play!