Windies coach Dyson's blunder results in England win

Guyana (West Indies), Mar.21 (ANI): West Indies cricket team coach John Dyson denied his team an almost certain win here on Friday by miscalculating on regulations that govern shortened matches.

In utterly bizarre circumstances England won the match last night by a run at Guyana's Providence Stadium.

It all happened when the West Indies batsmen were offered the opportunity to leave the field because of bad light. Assuming they were one run ahead under the Duckworth-Lewis method they were ushered off by their coach and manager waving frantically from the dressing room balcony. But they were actually one run behind.

A wicket, the seventh of the West Indies' innings, had fallen to the last ball bowled and this, crucially, changed the balance of a game that was already as tight as a steel drum, reports The Independent.

For a few minutes, the West Indies thought they had won and the bulk of an excited crowd left the ground assuming that their hero Shiv Chanderpaul, who had struck 26 runs off an over from Stephen Harmison, had turned the match their way.

But England captain Andrew Strauss was carrying a crumpled piece of paper carrying the required information thought they knew better.

The DL sheet, which at first glance looks sufficiently complicated to defeat professors of higher mathematics, was checked again.

To have beaten England at that stage of the match, it showed that the West Indies, if seven wickets down, needed to have scored 246 runs. But they had reached only 244. The loss of Denesh Ramdin to the second ball of the 47th over, bowled by Stuart Broad, had crucially altered the balance.

The West Indies players and management were stunned. England were simply relieved to have secured victory at last after failing to do so in every international this winter. That they were handed it on a plate was hardly their fault.

Strauss said they would have taken pretty much any victory. (ANI)