"For all that, questions need to be asked over why the game was allowed to end before time. Anybody who has been in Kanpur this week knew that the light starts to fade around four o'clock in the afternoon.

"The second mistake of the officials was to dock just a single over from each innings instead of reducing the break between innings. Those two decisions created a farce that was waiting to happen," it said.

Wide-selling tabloid, 'The Daily Mail' described the umpires' decision "crass" and wrote, "Cricket's capacity to shoot itself in the foot knows no bounds and the farcical end to the third one-day international here yesterday was another example of rules and regulations holding sway over the interests of spectators and simple common sense. At the end of it, England's slim chances of taking anything from this series had all but disappeared."