Having players warm up on a sink sponge-like McLean Park only prolonged the agony for the irate fans. PHOTO/Duncan Brown
It's people like Scott Styris who have the propensity to incite a running riot with premature and unsubstantiated assumptions whenever there's a crisis.
Former Black Cap Styris, known in cricketing circles as "pig dog" and a TV commentator these days, should know better every time he brings a microphone to his laughing gear.
"Look, you can add me to the list, the same as the crowd. I think they [the players] should be out here. They've [fans] seen the players warming up, kicking a football around and warming up with their cricket skills as well but for the crowd to see that and then not have any action for another hour and a half or two I think is wrong," Styris barked during game two of the three-match Chappell-Hadlee Series at McLean Park, Napier, on Thursday.
"And that comes down to Kumar Dharmasena. He is the senior umpire and he needs to take some leadership to say, 'Let's just get out there boys. There's nothing wrong with that and I don't think there's anything wrong with it'," he growled.
Wrong, wrong, wrong and highly irresponsible Styris but, then again, he was wide off the mark during the India v New Zealand third ODI in Mohali last October when he predicted off spinner Kedar Jadhav was incapable of taking wickets.
"I will walk out of the commentary box and take the first flight to New Zealand if Jadhav takes a wicket today," the 41-year-old had declared, albeit in a jocular and sporting manner.
Jadhav took three scalps, including that of Black Caps skipper Kane Williamson, so Styris had to vacate his seat in the commentary booth to leave former India internationals Sunil Gavaskar and Ravi Shashtri besides themselves.
It's time Styris gave up the fight and caught another flight out of the dog box.
Dharmasena and his two sidekicks, Chris Brown and Wayne Knights, should be commended for not bowing to public pressure and putting the safety of players first.
A little knowledge can be dangerous.
Besides, the pain etched on the faces of umpires, captains Aaron Finch and Williamson, as well as head groundsman Phil Stoyanoff isn't acting because if it is then they are in the wrong profession. Hollywood desperately wants you.
If anyone has doubts on player safety issues then ask Black Cap allrounder Doug Bracewell whose season ended abruptly in December.
The 26-year-old tore his anterior cruciate ligament while fielding on a dodgy rugby surface at Yarrow Stadium, New Plymouth, on December 10 in a game against the Northern Districts Knights during the McDonald's Super Smash T20 campaign.
Last month he went under a surgeon's knife.
Had the umpires buckled under unfair ridicule and abuse to signal the start of the ODI then the repercussions could have been worse.
I'd hate to think what the Australia team would have said had Mitchell Starc or Adam Zampa picked up injuries, with the all-important tour of India looming later this month.
I shared the media booth with the Aussie scribes at McLean Park on Thursday and their quizzical expressions, as proceedings slumped to preposterous proportions, didn't require interpretation.
Let's get one thing right. It wasn't the officials' fault at all. They are there to ensure the letter of the law is followed to prevent game days from deteriorating into a travesty.
It did become farcical at McLean Park and one wonders what else happens to stall such decisions.
If one is to engage in the blame game then the finger has to be pointed at Napier City Council and its protagonists.
Stoyanoff, someone who India used to jet out from Napier to prepare prime real estate, shouldn't be left under the Harris Stand, head down massaging his temples after he and his team slaved on preparing a belter of a wicket.
A bigger tragedy was allowing buffoons on to the park to bowl on the virgin strip.
Instead of Red Badge security officers kicking them off the park, they were fielding the balls back to the bowlers, after someone had set off an alarm in the hospitality booth of the Lowe Corporation stand.
They even had the audacity to threaten to evict any fans caught starting a Mexican Wave (a ritual to break boredom) on the embankment, for goodness sake.
But that's another matter for another time.
It's not the first time the council has come under scrutiny on the premier sporting venue in the province.
The council's inability to secure major sport events dates back to 2006 when they failed to secure the 2008 Fifa Women's Soccer World Cup.
Ditto in 2013 when the council didn't make the cut for the Fifa U20 Men's World Cup in 2015, which exposed the venues to an expected worldwide television audience of 170 million people in more than 100 countries.
Resigned to "the council can only do so much in a year", the then Napier mayor Barbara Arnott had conceded the Napier council probably didn't apply as much funding as Fifa had envisaged.
"We have a few silver linings so I don't think our city will be in mourning," Arnott had said amid disappointment but content they had secured three ODIs.
In March 2015, former Napier man Phillip Purvis had stressed the Bay was a much bigger player on the stage than it realised.
Purvis, an events promotions manager who was at McLean Park to oversee the fleet transportation logistics during the ICC World Cup, had expressed interest in working for the council to realise that potential even if it meant uprooting his family from France to return home.
A man who had fulfilled similar roles with the Sydney 2000 Olympics, European Football Championship, UEFA Champions League, Commonwealth Games, Rugby World Cup, athletics championship and World Equestrian Games, somehow he slipped through the council's net and with it went the bigger picture.
The independent inquiry that NZ Cricket head of corporate services and strategy Anthony Crummy awaits has come too late.
It's not just a wake-up call for the Bay but the earthquake has struck and the council has been left bereft of ideas instead of adopting the "drop, cover and hold on" drill.
NZ Cricket has to be culpable for prolonging the agony of fans.
Crummy said it was standard for officials to delay the decision to play despite the disappointment.
I disagree. Aussie skipper Finch said it had dawned on the tourists around 4pm that the park was unfit and unsafe so they had decided to throw the ball into the court of the ground officials.
Keeping fans until 7pm meant disgruntled fans kept buying food and drinks and kept bitching.
An earlier lifting of the bails would have helped the damage-control process although some of the out-of-towners may beg to differ.
James McConie, TV presenter with The Crowd Goes Wild, said: "Napier, no more ODIs for you. No more international cricket, it's over. We're giving it to Hastings."
Jovial it may have been from McConie but there's food for thought.
"Come on, you're orchardists so use your brains," he signed off.
Okay that was a pig-doggish-like remark but we get the picture.
Is McLean Park's drainage an issue because the underground has been prepared, akin to Yarrow Stadium, to provide more traction for rugby?
If cash-rich but nous-poor Napier is going to sit back to watch a quintessential venue disappear from an international cricket circuit then it may be something Hastings District Council may wish to consider.
The international Unison Hockey Stadium, at the Hawke's Bay Regional Sports Park, seems to be doing just fine after stealing the thunder from the traditional Park Island venue.