Inclement English weather claimed yet another World Cup match after India’s group game against 2015 finalists New Zealand was called off without a ball being bowled at Trent Bridge yesterday.
A soggy outfield from overnight showers had already delayed the start of the contest between the tournament’s only two unbeaten sides.
Umpires Marais Erasmus and Paul Reiffel carried out almost hourly inspections in intermittent drizzle before finally throwing in the towel in the afternoon.
This was the fourth match to be either called off or abandoned in the rain-hit tournament with many questioning the absence of reserve days for group matches.
“Sensible decision to not play, given the outfield wasn’t fully fit,” India captain Virat Kohli said.
“One point not a bad thing for sides that have won all their games so far. So we’ll take it.”
New Zealand top the table with seven points, two ahead of India who have played one game fewer.
Having won their previous three games, Kiwi skipper Kane Williamson was not too worried and welcomed the gap before facing South Africa on Wednesday.
“We’ve been about four days and we haven’t seen the sun, so this doesn’t surprise us. It’s not ideal, but little bit of time off is also important,” Williamson said.
“We have some break now midway through, so it’s a good chance for the guys to freshen up and look forward to the next challenge.
“South Africa is a very good side, we know every time we play them, they’re extremely competitive, but we have a few days to refresh and come back.”
The hostile weather denied India an opportunity to trial their new opening pair with KL Rahul, replacing the injured Shikhar Dhawan, joining Rohit Sharma at the top of the order.
Dhawan, who was hit by a Pat Cummins bouncer during his match-winning century against Australia at the Oval, is likely to miss India’s next three games.
“Shikhar will be in a plaster for a couple of weeks, we’ll assess and see,” Kohli said.
“Hopefully he’ll be available for the later half and the semi-finals. He’s motivated, we wanted to keep him back.”

No advantage
New Zealand head coach Gary Stead said it was unfortunate for tournament organisers to lose four games to rain out of just 18 matches so far in the round-robin event.
“Reserve days are going to be a logistical nightmare, probably the ICC has made that fairly well known,” Stead told reporters.
“Unfortunately it’s a bit of an anomaly the amount of days we have lost to rain — the biggest amount of days lost in World Cups ever.
“It’s a bit of bad luck. It can rain anywhere in the world. My first tour was in Dubai and it rained in the desert.”
Stead said he saw no advantage in the match being abandoned.
“If you want to go through and play a semi-final or make the final, you’re going to have to play all the teams and you’re going to have beat those teams,” he said.
“It’s too early in the tournament to know if this (abandoned match) is going to be influential or not in the long run. We know we still have to play good cricket against all the teams we come up against,” Stead said.
“We would have loved to have played India today. They’re obviously going hot, and we feel as though we’re playing reasonably well as well, so it would have been a really nice match-up,” Stead said.