A Bollywood shoot, then a “poor” pitch
Leicestershire are fighting back. The county confirmed this week they will appeal a 27-point deduction and a 5,000 pound fine handed down over the pitch used for their County Championship win against Glamorgan in August, a game they won by 42 runs on a surface later rated “poor” by the match referee.
The club’s defence sounds almost too strange to invent. Groundsman Callum Lewin argued that filming for an unscheduled Bollywood production, reportedly a biopic of former India captain Sourav Ganguly, took over Grace Road four days before the Glamorgan match and kept the pitch uncovered for eight hours in bright sunshine. The independent Cricket Discipline Panel wasn’t moved. It ruled the disruption lasted only one day and did not excuse what followed.
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43 examples of uneven bounce
Match referee Ian Ramage did not hold back in his written report, logging 43 examples of uneven bounce across the match at Uptonsteel Grace Road. The pitch itself sounded like two different surfaces stitched together: 16 millimetres of grass through the middle to help the seamers, just 3 millimetres at each end to help the spinners. Other pitches prepared at Grace Road this season carried a similar look, the panel noted, though none played quite as unevenly as this one.
No cheating, but no excuse either
The panel stopped short of accusing Leicestershire of manipulating the surface deliberately, and chief executive Emma White seized on that distinction. “The Panel itself found that the club did not intend the pitch to play as it did and that this was not a case of cheating. Our grounds team has an outstanding record, and I am proud of the work they do,” she said, while confirming the appeal is now underway. The 27 points matter far more than the fine. Leicestershire kept their Division One survival hopes alive only days ago with a five-wicket win over Hampshire, and every point taken off them now could decide whether that fight was worth having.
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