Bad pitch forces abandonment

An unfit pitch forced the postponement of the first one-dayer between New Zealand A and India A at the Bert Sutcliffe Oval. Only six overs were possible before umpires Phil Jones and Wayne Knights decided to abandon the game. The match has been postponed by New Zealand Cricket and will be played on Wednesday at the same venue but on a different strip.

New Zealand managed to score eight runs in the period as they struggled to play deliveries rising alarmingly off the pitch and some staying too low. They lost their openers Hamish Rutherford and George Worker for no score to deliveries that lifted sharply. Daniel Flynn, who scored seven, was the only batsman to get runs.

NZC Head of Cricket Operations Lindsay Crocker expressed surprise at the substandard pitch. "Other pitches which have been played on this season, including practice ones, have played well and historically been of a high standard.

"We'll be looking into the issue and will be closely analysing the structure and surface to see what went wrong on this particular pitch and how to avoid a repeat," he told the NZC website.

The two subsequent one-dayers have both been pushed behind for a day due to the rescheduling of this game: the second match will now be played on Thursday and the final on Sunday. NZC have also included a four-day match to the program, to be played from September 26 to September 29, with the final four-dayer to be played four days later as planned.