Ever heard of pollution leading to a cricket match being cancelled? It happened on Sunday at the Ranji Trophy as high levels of pollution and smog cancelled two Ranji Trophy fixtures in New Delhi. The Gujarat-Bengal match at the Feroz Shah Kotla and the Hyderabad-Tripura match at the Karnail Singh Stadium were cancelled after there was no improvement in air quality on the second day of the fixture.
The Board of Control for Cricket in India will reschedule the clash to a later date in December, reported ESPNcricinfo. "The teams were informed at around 3.15 in the afternoon that the match was called off," said Sairaj Bahutule, the Bengal coach. "Our eyes were burning. Some of the guys had headaches. Pollution was at the highest level. This is the first time in my cricketing life I have come across such a scenario. We have not got any directives from the BCCI [on] whether teams will share points or the match might be rescheduled."
Hyderabad's coach Bharat Arun said, "We could not even stand outside as our eyes started burning. It was impossible to run in or do anything".
Brief scores:
Hyderabad v Tripura: Play abandoned owing to rising levels of pollution
Bengal v Gujarat: Play abandoned owing to rising levels of pollution
Baroda 93 & 44 trail Tamil Nadu 337 all out (Abhinav Mukund 100; Munaf Patel 4/91) by 200 runs
Haryana 303 lead Kerala 170/1 (Vishnu Vinod 58) by 133 runs
Mumbai 345 (Suryakumar Yadav 110; Karn Sharma 5/81) lead Railways 76/3 by 269 runs
Uttar Pradesh 335 lead Punjab 243/3 (Yuvraj Singh 72 not out; Saurabh Kumar 3/58) by 92 runs
Saurashtra 121/9 (Arup Das 7/39) v Assam
Jharkhand 493 (Ishan Kishan 273) lead Delhi 225/3 (Rishab Pant 107 not out, Unmukt Chand 89 not out) 268 runs
Karnataka 267 & 108/3 (Ravikumar Samarth 45 not out) lead Vidarbha 176 (Jitesh Sharma 61; Sreenath Aravind 3/27, Shreyas Gopal 3/22) 199 runs
Rajasthan 323 lead Odisha 143/8 (Aniket Choudhary 4/34) by 180 runs
Services 400/8 (Shamsher Yadav 136, Rahul Singh 95 not out) v Andhra Pradesh
Chhattisgarh 198 (Rituraj Singh 6/60) lead Goa 127/6 (Kant Singh 3/27) by 71 runs
Jammu & Kashmir 162 & 39/0 trail Himachal Pradesh 370 (Paras Dogra 89, Rishi Dhawan 79 not out; Aamir Aziz 4/56)
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