Mark 'expert' Lawrenson

Looking good for a win here.

Great article added by MaidstoneFox. As the post above has said the club should have adopted the same line however credit to the Groundsman to have the balls to keep his integrity and be honest. Henderson and Thomas can be very difficult individuals to deal with.

The seam on the ball will nip the grass out of the pitch should the grass be too thick creating a kind of divot, it doesn’t disturb the soil just the grass. Raking the pitch out would thin the grass covering and get rid of the clumps. I think the issue combined with the above was the amount of cracks which caused uneven bounce. The hot weather and the amount of extra cricket (women’s games have added more pressure on the square) means pitches will get reused and are never as good second or third time around.

I really do hope so. It’s one of my bug bears in life that managers with less understanding/experience in a specific area can instruct someone with vastly more knowledge how to do their job. Cricket is terrible for it, the groundsman will have been told what to do (albeit nobody would have wanted uneven bounce) Fons is a strange character and along with Claude has to take responsibility for this disaster. Hopefully we will win at the weekend and get another trophy under our belts.

All games around the country have their own independent match referee present. It doesn’t matter how a pitch played somewhere else as there are so many factors involved in pitch preparation. A pitch must meet a certain criteria and uneven bounce from day one of a four day game is a definite red flag and coupled with the seam movement led to the pitch being rated as poor. A game going all four days and players scoring 90+ in the second innings rightly or wrongly are not considered when it comes to the final pitch mark under the ECB pitch criteria. Im assuming no other counties had their pitches marked below average or poor by the match referee present so there is no charge to be made. As I’ve said before it seems an incredibly harsh punishment though and I feel for the groundstaff as they are instructed by the DOC and the head coach when it comes to preparing pitches.

Aaron Lilley if I remember correctly

There is no doubt that Thomas and Henderson control everything down to the pitches they play on, Thomas in particular is a control freak. This is on the 2 of them and as you say it doesn’t reflect well on the club that an employee with many years experience isn’t comfortable or is unable to push back on two people who have far less experience in pitch preparation particularly in the UK. That being said it’s a extremely harsh punishment for us and has probably been that harsh to try and nip the interference in the bud and protect the HGM in the future.

Could have been worse I suppose, still an absolute disaster for the club. Won’t be allowed any more “result” pitches either going forward, keeps the coach in check I guess.

Wracking my brain to think of one 🤣

Looking bleak, this is a must win game for us. In the words of Basil Fawlty “the games up”

Pitch is doing very little, maybe a few keeping a little low. 280 could be really testing.

Band of horses next month in Manchester

This is looking ominous for us now, we desperately need a breakthrough

Conceding goals has been a big problem for us for a few seasons, always conceding makes it so difficult to achieve any kind of success. We need to tighten it up at the back and then we might start looking up rather than down. Can we keep a clean sheet with the tactics and players we have? Doubtful so I’m going for 2-2.

I was there that night, what a great goal and I love seeing the Leicester fans celebrating behind the goal!

Let us know how you get on, and good luck

Fons came out and criticised Cox after a T20 game

Fell out with Fons, not many come back from that!

Loving the Cov disaster. No points No goals I know they are miles ahead of us at the moment but it’s lovely to see them struggling

Currently in Bodrum, an amazing place.

The Martin out thread has been closed, what’s going on? 🤣

5-4 defeat?

There is their 3rd

Woeful at the back.

Ffs