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BIRMINGHAM - New Zealand cricket captain Daniel Vettori laid the blame squarely on the umpires for the farce that cost his side a one-day cricket victory over England here today.
Vettori said umpires Steve Davis of Australia and Ian Gould of England should have applied more pressure on captain Paul Collingwood and his bowlers as they sent down 19 overs in 83 minutes before rain and bad light forced an early end.
It left New Zealand one over and seven runs short of their Duckworth-Lewis target of 134 off 20 overs, which would have constituted a completed match.
Vettori said he had no problem with Collingwood appearing to slow the game down.
"England's over rate was particularly slow but if we were in that situation we'd probably do the same thing," Vettori said.
"You just need the umpires to take control of the game and dictate the play, and there were a lot of stoppages and other things. If you tidy that up we wouldn't have been in the situation we were in.
"You need to get the game progressing as quickly as possible. There's obviously a bit of gamesmanship going on, that's all part of the game and you can't attack anyone for that."
But match referee Javagal Srinath, the former Indian test bowler, gave the umpires his full support and said Collingwood wouldn't be fined for a slow over rate.
"They (umpires) did a commendable job today. It was a brave decision - it wasn't easy in the centre to make that decision to come off," Srinath said.
Srinath said the match situation shouldn't be a factor when umpires were assessing the conditions.
He added England were "well within the time frame to finish their overs".
The 30-minute innings break also came under scrutiny, after more than four hours had already been lost and the weather was closing in again.
Srinath said a minimum 30-minute break was part of the playing conditions and was non-negotiable, but Collingwood admitted it was bizarre.
"I can understand them getting frustrated when it goes down to the wire, and they look at a 30-minute lunch break," Collingwood said.
"It's in the rules and there's nothing we can do as players or umpires but I believe it's something that has to be looked at.
"We could have gone out there in 10 or 15 minutes, we'd already had our lunch before the match. From a players' point of view we were ready to go out there, it was a surprise to us."
Vettori said the team's official match report would focus on the umpires needing to progress the game at a quicker pace to avoid any repeats.
He said the result "felt like a loss", as they go to Saturday's third match in Bristol 0-1 down.
- NZPA
