Americans might be good at football, golf or rugby or any other sport for that matter, but when it comes to cricket they seem to be clueless about the rules of the game.
Over the weekend the United States of America Cricket Association (USACA) held its Twenty20 national championships at a park in Florida in which four teams were involved and following their semifinals, South East Region and the USA Development XI progressed to the final.
South East Region posted a score of 112 in the final match and after 19 overs the USA Development XI were at 92-7 and were left facing an uphill battle, requiring 21 runs from the final over to win.
And that is when the weird things started happening.
According to live updates from USACA’s official Facebook page and a report on espncricinfo.com by US correspondent Peter Della Penna, Andre Lindsay clubbed the first two deliveries of Herlando Johnson’s over for six to reduce the victory margin to nine from four balls, which was followed by a run out on the third delivery.
Then two runs were taken off the fourth delivery, at which point for unexplained reasons Johnson was unable to continue bowling. So with seven runs needed from two balls, Dunae Nathaniel came into the attack.
Nathaniel only conceded two runs from his first delivery, leaving the USA Development XI needing five to win from the final ball, but the pressure got to the bowler as he bowled three consecutive wides and after the batsmen scurried through for a bye on the third wide there was now just one run required from one ball.
The USA Development XI got the single they needed and began wildly celebrating an unlikely win.
However, about 40 minutes after the game, USACA deleted a post on its Facebook page declaring the USA Development XI the winners of the game and according to Della Penna replaced it with an update that stated that the USA Development team was penalised 5 runs for a batsman obstructing the fielder and added that the 2015 USACA National T20 Champion is the South East Region.
There is, however, actually no provision in the laws of cricket for five penalty runs to be given against a batsman for obstructing the field, the report added.
