Rain leaves teams frustrated, disappointed

For the second time in a row, Afghanistan was robbed off a chance to play their maiden international game at the iconic Melbourne Cricket Ground.

With the rain around at MCG, and with three straight washouts, there has been a lot of disappointment even as the crowd turnout was much larger for the second game of the night. However, no one would be as hard done as Afghanistan, who after three games have a high probability of being knocked out without a fair chance to show what they can do in the format, reports Cricbuzz.

With four teams affected on the night, Afghanistan had sympathy from other quarters.

"It's tough, isn't it? You mentioned Afghanistan now had two games washed out in a tournament where you potentially only play five matches. Yeah, I think that it's naturally frustrating for all of us if that happens," said England's skipper Jos Buttler on Friday. It has left Afghanistan with the unenviable position of already dependent on other results to go their way to have a chance of progressing.

"Very disappointed to be not playing at such an amazing ground. Me and Rash (Rashid) played a lot of BBL games here, but most of the players are waiting to play here. But it's not in our hands and we look forward to the upcoming games. The preparation was really good, we learned a lot from our first game against England and worked on our particular mistakes. We were fully ready for these 2 games, but unfortunately, we did not get to play," said Mohammad Nabi.

His coach Jonathan Trott said, "Very frustrating. Obviously, after the New Zealand game, you thought no way is it going to happen twice. In a game that's a must-win game for us or a game we wanted to win very much."

"The frustrating thing as well is there's a stadium down the road that's got a roof on it as well so you can play cricket there. So we could have had lots of cricket," said Trott.

Another consequence of the rain is that the net run-rates becoming even a bigger factor as the league stage draws to an end. Asked if England playing their league game last was an advantage, Buttler said, "Yeah, it could be a small advantage, but to make use of that, of course, we need to win the game against New Zealand."

"Net run rate is going to come into it. We knew that at the start of the tournament. When you only play five games, net run rate can decide and influence who goes through into the final four. We feel as though we've been here before," said Australia's coach Andrew McDonald.