Leicestershire are set to drop out of Division One after a Cricket Discipline Panel deduction of 27 points, following a breach of ECB pitch regulations during their County Championship win over Glamorgan in August. The county is weighing an appeal, with 10 days available to challenge the sanction.
Cricket Discipline Panel Upholds “Poor” Pitch Charge
The Cricket Discipline Panel upheld the Cricket Regulator’s charge that the pitch at Grace Road was rated “poor,” and the punishment strips Leicestershire of all 19 points they earned from the Glamorgan victory. An additional eight-point penalty comes with the ruling, along with a £5,000 fine, and a further eight points have been suspended for 12 months. The decision landed midway through Leicestershire’s penultimate fixture of the season, against Hampshire, and pushes them below Hampshire to the bottom of the table.
The Regulator pointed to uneven bounce as the central problem, caused by moving cracks and localised collapses where those cracks met. Ball indentations from early in the match added to the trouble, and so did large clumps of grass across the surface. Match referee Ian Ramage logged 43 separate instances of uneven bounce during the game. Leicestershire’s own response to the charge conceded that the pitch fell below standard, but the panel went further, ruling that the defects were foreseeable and should have been managed by the club’s grounds staff.
Grounds Team Tried to Repeat Earlier Yorkshire Pitch
Leicestershire had aimed to recreate a surface similar to the one used against Yorkshire in June, a match they won by an innings and 39 runs. For the Glamorgan game, the grounds team left 3mm of grass at each end and 16mm through a greener middle strip. But conditions were different this time. The pitch had already hosted two T20 matches in the previous ten weeks and had baked under two months of intense heat, leaving the soil drier and more prone to cracking than the surface prepared for Yorkshire.
Head grounds manager Callum Lewin told The Regulator he would not have chosen to prepare that particular pitch given the conditions. He said raising concerns about moisture levels with director of cricket Claude Henderson and head coach Alfonso Thomas would have been difficult, since both had asked for a repeat of the Yorkshire pitch and hold final say over preparation. Lewin also flagged worry over an unusually high number of small plates forming from the cracks, which raised the chances of irregular bounce.
Bollywood Shoot Cited but Dismissed as a Factor
Leicestershire argued that an unscheduled film shoot at the ground four days before the Glamorgan match, reportedly for a biopic on former India captain Sourav Ganguly, had kept the pitch uncovered for eight hours under bright sun. The Regulator dismissed this as a mitigating factor, noting it affected only a single day of preparation.
While the panel accepted Leicestershire never intended for the pitch to play unevenly, it ruled the club’s preparation approach was unreasonable given the risks involved. The tribunal concluded that Leicestershire failed to meet their obligation under Regulation 7.6 to prepare the best quality pitch reasonably possible for the match.
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