Lorgat slams Gavaskar while defending ICC’s verdict to retain Duckworth-Lewis method

Haroon Lorgat has criticized Sunil Gavaskar for his negative comments against the ICC’s decision to retain the Duckworth-Lewis method for settling interrupted matches.

Johannesburg : International Cricket Council (ICC) chief executive Haroon Lorgat has criticized former Indian captain Sunil Gavaskar for his negative comments against the ICC’s decision to retain the Duckworth-Lewis method for settling interrupted matches

Reacting to Gavaskar’s comments, Lorgat said: “It is not a healthy situation ... when the former chairman has such a critical view of how it was handled.” “With respect to Sunil Gavaskar, I was present at the meeting (of the Cricket Committee), the president of the ICC was present and the process was proper, fair and transparent,” he added “Let`s not forget Duckworth-Lewis is a tried and tested method and to radically change something, you need something that is radically different and makes substantial sense,” he said. Lorgat said that ICC would not be adopting a substitute system designed by an Indian statistician V. Jayadevan, reports said. Jayadevan, who devised the VJD method, has written ICC president Sharad Pawar to criticize last week`s decision, and Gavaskar, a former ICC Cricket Committee chairman, also said that the VJD should have been given a year`s trial. But Lorgat said Gavaskar shouldn’t have criticized ICC’s handling of the issue. The Twenty20 World Cup, which starts on September 18 in Sri Lanka, is occurring at a time, which is traditionally marked by the start of heavy monsoons in Colombo. In 31 years as a Test-playing country, Sri Lanka has only scheduled nine days of international cricket in October and six of those have been affected by rain. But Lorgat said: “We have a serious level of concern over that but such is Mother Nature you can`t control that. You can do your utmost to schedule wisely and the front end of the tournament is in September but there`s one week in October we have got to get through. ANI