England win at last but it's pure farce in Guyana

Paul Newman reports from Georgetown
Updated: 06:13 EST, 22 March 2009

Cricket was caught up in high farce again when England won their first meaningful match of the winter at the 15th attempt in extraordinary fashion after West Indies accepted an offer for bad light when they were in a losing position.

John Dyson, West Indies’ Australian coach, told his players to walk off with the first one day international here balanced on a knife-edge in front of a capacity crowd of 19,000 at the new National Stadium.

He had wrongly believed West Indies were ahead under Duckworth-Lewis rules, at 244 for seven chasing 271 to win with 22 balls left, when in fact they were behind by one run.

What's going on? Collingwood and skipper Strauss are bemused

Chaotic scenes ensued with both teams believing they had won and spectators bemused until it became clear that Dyson was basing his calculation on six wickets
lost when, in fact, the fall of a seventh West Indies wicket had swung the match in
England’s favour.

John Dyson took full responsibility for his extraordinary gaffe

West Indies captain Chris Gayle said: ‘The coach was looking in the wrong column. He’s apologised but I’m not going to kill him.’

Dyson took full responsibility for the incredible blunder afterwards.

He said: 'I thought we were ahead when we were behind by one.

'It's my responsibility, I accept it. I have apologised to the team, it's all I can do. It was a bad mistake.

'It's extremely disappointing.'

England captain Andrew Strauss admitted his side were bewildered by the events which saw his side claim a bizarre victory.

Strauss said: 'We looked at the sheet and it seemed to suggest that we were one run ahead.

'You can never be sure and when they went off we were scratching our heads.

'Every ball it changes but we were pretty confident. Everyone in our support staff was 100 per cent confident we had won. It was just a case of it being verified.'