Jos Buttler reacts to rain paying spoilsport in T20 World Cup: It’s a shame tonight
England captain Jos Buttler has said that it was a shame that England vs Australia had to be called off after persistent rain continued at Melbourne.
This was the fourth game at the World Cup that bore no result due to rain, which has ended up complicating the points table like never before.
Not only England vs Australia, Afghanistan were robbed of a chance to play at the MCG after they fell on the wrong side of the rain Gods, for the second time out of three matches in the tournament.
“I’m not a weather expert on Australia this time of year. We all want to play full games of crickets. We all do,” Buttler said at the post match press conference.
“Naturally, we play a sport that’s in the open air, and the elements are a huge part of our game. They affect surfaces we play on. They affect conditions. They’re an intriguing bit of what makes the sport really unique,” he continued.
“Yeah, it’s a shame tonight, especially for everybody involved — the fans who were going to come and watch this game live, everyone wanting to watch on TV, for players especially as well. Australia against England at the MCG in a must win World Cup match is as big as it gets in your career, and they’re the games you want to be involved in,” Butter said on the game getting called off.
The T20 World Cup 2022 has seen a record number of disturbances by rain with four matches getting affected already. The previous record was held by the 2019 edition of the ODI World Cup, which had a similar number of occurrences.
“No matter whatever the result was going to be, it’s something you want to experience as a cricket team. You don’t know how often those kinds of opportunities will come around. So I think there’s an element of sadness that you don’t get to, win, lose, or draw, play the match,” a composed Buttler said.
England will be facing New Zealand in their next game which would be crucial for their qualification into the semi-finals of the tournament.
“Yeah, we’d do well to live up to that one, wouldn’t it?” Buttler replied on being asked if the match would effectively be a final for the team.
“For us, we knew, having lost the game against Ireland with three — the way the format is anyway, every game is pretty much a must win,” he further added.