English cricket club Leicestershire has been docked 27 points for the poor state of its playing surface. The head groundsman blames the extreme heat as well as a film shoot for a Bollywood film.
Due to the points deduction, the club is now facing relegation.
According to several reports, the referee reported 43 instances of uneven bounce caused by cracks in the ground during a game played on 20 August. Cricket’s regulator later ruled that the pitch was below standard.
While the club had won the game against Glamorgan, 19 points from the victory were deducted and an additional eight-point penalty was handed down.
Another eight-point deduction was suspended until the end of the season in case of a further breach of pitch regulations.
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Mitigating circumstances
Leicestershire’s head groundsman Callum Lewin argued that he could not work on the pitch properly because of several reasons.
“There were a lot of circumstances leading up to the game that were just out of my control, such as the weather was 35 degrees Celsius and we had an unscheduled Bollywood filming event four days before,” he told the England and Wales Cricket Board’s regulator. “I wasn’t allowed to work on the pitch. I wasn’t allowed to cover it or anything.”
According to the regulator’s statement, the moisture readings were below expected, despite heavy watering to compensate for eight continuous hours of exposure to a blazing sun.
However, the cricket board would have none of it, and viewed the arguments as an invalid excuse. They claimed that the filming only lasted one day and it was ultimately down to the club to take preventative measures.
“Risk management should have envisaged the need to incorporate protection of the pitch during the Bollywood event,” the regulator wrote.
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