Somerset Poor Pitch Penalty

Somerset handed 12-point penalty for "poor" pitch for County Championship title-decider

It means that, pending any appeal, Somerset will begin their 2020 County Championship campaign, on -12 points

The Cricketer | 18/11/2019

Somerset have been handed a 24-point deduction – with 12 of those points suspended for two years – as punishment for the pitch prepared at Taunton for the county’s effective title-decider against Essex.

It means that, pending any appeal, Somerset will begin their 2020 County Championship campaign, on -12 points.

The two sides faced each other in the final game of the County Championship season, with Somerset knowing that only a win would secure Tom Abell’s side a first-ever four-day title. However, the forecast for the game, which took place between September 23-26, appeared bleak from the outset, with rain forecast throughout.

The game was ultimately drawn, but only after 21 wickets had fallen in the 148 overs possible in the match. Seventeen batsmen fell to spinners, while Sam Cook took four wickets. Somerset then forfeited their second innings in an attempt to bundle Essex out in the final session of the rain-affected game.

Yet, after a disciplinary panel hearing at Lord’s, Somerset have been found guilty of breaching ECB pitch regulations.

The ECB hearing was convened after the pitch used for the game, which was televised live on Sky Sports, was rated as "poor" due to excessive unevenness of bounce.

The investigation into the surface determined that the pitch “was correctly rated poor” and “the pitch prepared for the match was not the best quality pitch that Somerset CCC was able to prepare for the match”.

The league’s regulations state that “each county shall actively seek to prepare the best quality cricket pitch that it can for the match that it is staging”.

Somerset accepted that the “poor” pitch rating was correct, but pleaded not guilty to the second charge.

The panel, which convened to consider the second of the two charges, was chaired by Tim O’Gorman alongside Alan Wadey and Claire Taylor.

On the evidence submitted, the panel upheld the charge, finding Somerset in breach of the regulation. The county have 14 days to appeal the decision, with the panel’s reasons to be published in due course.

Somerset have confirmed that they will await the report from the Cricket Discipline Commission before deciding on whether to appeal.

Taunton has become renowned in recent years for its spin-friendly pitches - though excessive turn was not mentioned as a reason for Somerset's deduction on this occasion.

Jack Leach has taken 180 first-class wickets in the last four seasons. This is not the first time the club’s surfaces had been at the centre of a controversy; in 2018, Somerset and Lancashire tied in a game that saw just 538 runs across four innings. The wicket was deemed “below average” because it “demonstrated excessive turn.”

Less than 12 months beforehand, Somerset had beaten Middlesex in September to stay in Division One at their opponents’ expense. After the game, Middlesex director of cricket Angus Fraser described the surface as “dreadful”.

“In 35 years of cricket I haven't seen many things like that,” he said at the time. “They played to their strengths and won the game, but I wouldn't have thought we would have gone down that route had we needed to win a game at home.

“It’s disgraceful what they [Somerset] did. I’ve never seen such a doctored pitch.”