Cricketing authorities must act to prevent time-wasting, Hussain urges

Staff and Agencies

December 12, 2000

Nasser Hussain has criticised the time-wasting tactics employed by Moin Khan during England's six wicket win over Pakistan and called for cricketing authorities to introduce new rules to prevent a recurrence.

The Pakistan skipper slowed the over rate down to around nine in the run up to tea yesterday forcing England to bat in the dark to complete their victory.

Moin was warned by umpire Steve Bucknor and match referee Ranjan Madugalle but both officials were powerless to penalise Pakistan since a five run penalty recently introduced into the game's laws to counteract time-wasting has not yet been applied to international cricket.

"I can't quite work out why one is an ICC regulation and one is a local regulation," said Hussain.

"I'm a firm believer that if the ICC say something then we should play those rules.

"We knew the five run penalty didn't apply last night but there should be something to stop the game being slowed down too much.

"At no stage did we know we'd won that game. We thought we could be going off at any time because we knew five minutes later it would have been pitch black out there.

"I said to Graham when I went out there that we had to be positive, there was no point getting it down to the last ball because there may not have been one.

"It was pretty dark, but that was up to the umpire to decide and I thought they did a good job. They were strong and I think it would have been a tragedy if we hadn't finished the game off.

"We were in a no lose situation really. It was always going to go down to bad light and we were always going to go for it all the way - if we'd have gone nine down we could have just strolled off."

Match-winner Thorpe described England's last night in Karachi as a 'special night'.

"Moin was trying to slow it down and I'm sure we'd have done the same if we'd have been in that position, but it's always up to the batsman and we were happy to stay out there.

"We've been at the ground most nights and it starts getting very dusky around that time, but that was different - it was a special night, we had a game to win and there was no way we were coming off."

England and Wales Cricket Board chief executive Tim Lamb also called on the International Cricket Council to lok again at the problem.

"Today is an example too far, and I really do think that the ICC have got to look at this again.There are no effective sanctions in place to deal with time-wasting," he told Sky News.

"I think there are a lot of other sides who would have probably slowed the over rate down as well, but what we saw today was potentially a public relations disaster.

"I think it is time to look at it to see whether penalties such as we're bringing in in the domestic first-class championship (in England) next year are now appropriate."

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