Leicestershire decision rankles

I have to admit to feeling uncomfortable with the Leicestershire pitch verdict.

Their punishment consists of the loss of all 19 points earned in the win over Glamorgan, an extra eight-point penalty and a £5,000 fine. A further eight-point deduction has been suspended for a year. It all but condemns them to relegation. 

They scored 151 and 257 in the game, against Glamorgan's 152 and 214. Two batters, Sheridon Gumbs and Kiran Carlson, made 90s and the final innings lasted 86 overs, the game ending on the morning of the fourth day. 

Really, is that so bad? Or is that a very good cricket pitch that made for an absorbing game? 

I don't think they were overly bright in shaving both ends and leaving grass on in the middle. It didn't look good and yes, it made them an easy target. A non-Test ground county, trying to get a result...whatever next?  But there were a lot of low scores around that week and how is it worse than Yorkshire 185 and 82, Surrey 83 and 187-9, a fortnight later? Other than that the latter was at The Oval and finished on the third day...?

Nor do they appear to have thought through giving access to the unscheduled filming of scenes for a forthcoming  Bollywood movie, seemingly about Sourav Ganguly, in the days before the game. The head groundsman said that he didn't have access to the square, which seems a classic case of putting commercial needs ahead of the practical ones of running a cricket club. I have no idea what money that brought in, but I hope it was substantial.

But again, was it any worse than the anodyne pitches that produce a four-day runfest, too often artificially massaging the averages of batters and driving bowlers to frustration? 

The issue appears to have been uneven bounce and batters were hit on the hands a few times. I have sympathy, but that kind of thing has been happening since the game began and you should have seen it back in the 70s and 80s, let alone on uncovered pitches. Remember the story when Colin Ingleby-Mackenzie was repeatedly rapped on the hands when Hampshire were bowled out at Burton in 1958, during the game that effectively finished in a day? 'For God's sake someone catch the thing', he allegedly said, as Jackson and Rhodes caused mayhem.

I'm not advocating that sort of pitch, but there has to be some encouragement for bowlers, a challenge for batters. Goodness knows, the game is heavily enough weighted towards the willow, with bigger bats, shorter boundaries, blameless surfaces and better protection than there has ever been. 

Cricket isn't and shouldn't be just about the hitting of fours and sixes. I have watched too many matches where I lost interest at the end of day two, when it was clear that the massive score posted by the team batting first was going to be matched by their opponents. Thereafter, it simply became something of interest to statisticians and those wishing to inflate their average for the summer. 

It needs looked at and I would bet my shiniest shekel that this wouldn't have happened if the pitch in question was on the square of a Test-playing county, or that of a host of the 'other competition'. 

Don't get me wrong, Leicestershire returning to division 2 is probably better for the red ball prospects of Derbyshire in 2027. Durham were too good by far this year, but what looked like being an excellent relegation battle has now become something of an enforced formality. 

It is wrong and yet again evidence that in the ECB, cricket has an organisation that is unacceptably poor.