Somerset handed 24-point penalty for preparing a below-par pitch

Somerset County Cricket Club, a famous name around the England and Wales cricketing circuit, has been handed a 12-point per season penalty for two seasons in a row by tue England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) disciplinary panel. The incident happened when the home side Somerset was playing their Division one County Championship final against the touring Essex.

Despite being a well-known County cricket club in the history of England cricket, Somerset has never won a County Championship since its inception more than a century ago. This was a golden opportunity for them to create history in front of their home crowd who were eagerly waiting for this century-plus drought to finally come to a sweet end.

But Essex had other ideas. On a tricky pitch where spinners dominated the whole game, Essex escaped a square turner when the match ended in a draw. The major reason behind the match ending in a draw was persistent rain throughout the course of the game. 17 out of 21 wickets which fell on that rank turner was taken by the spin bowlers of both sides.

Essex won the championship as they had finished first in the league stage on the points table whereas Somerset finished on the second position. Essex skipper Ryan ten Doeschate wasn’t happy at all with the surface saying, “I’ve been stressing the severity of how bad that pitch is. They’ve really taken a risk here by producing this wicket, but I’m sure we would have done as well,” as quoted by Sportskeeda.

Somerset have two weeks to appeal to this punishment

The exact remarks by the ECB disciplinary panel were ‘excessive unevenness of bounce’ referring to the pitch. They straightaway gave a 24-point deduction to the home side saying that 12-point each will be deducted at the start of the next two County seasons from the Somerset’s account. As a result of that, Somerset will start on -12 points when they play their first match of the upcoming season.

Somerset have now got two weeks to appeal to this punishment by the disciplinary panel but as of now, they will wait for further announcements by the panel, if any. But this is not the first time when the county club has come under scrutiny. The ECB had already given an ultimatum to Somerset in 2018 when they had prepared a similar kind of a pitch for their match against Lancashire which ended in just two days.