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Wednesday, July 23, 2025

Oval gets ICC Warning

by

20160909

The ICC has hand­ed of­fi­cial warn­ings un­der its pitch and out­field mon­i­tor­ing process to Kingsmead in Dur­ban and the Queen's Park Oval in Port-of-Spain.

Kingsmead host­ed the first Test be­tween South Africa and New Zealand from Au­gust 19 to 23, and the Queen's Park Oval the fourth Test be­tween West In­dies and In­dia from Au­gust 18 to 22. Both match­es were heav­i­ly cur­tailed be­cause of out­field con­di­tions.

Andy Py­croft and Ran­jan Madugalle, the match ref­er­ees for the two Tests, both rat­ed the out­fields "poor" in their of­fi­cial re­ports.Madugalle and Ge­off Al­lardice, the ICC's gen­er­al man­ag­er, re­viewed CSA's re­sponse to the "poor" rat­ing, while Al­lardice and match ref­er­ee David Boon re­viewed WICB's re­sponse.

Since this was the first oc­ca­sion ei­ther ground had re­ceived a "poor" rat­ing, the grounds stood to re­ceive ei­ther a warn­ing or a fine not ex­ceed­ing USD 15,000, along with "a di­rec­tive for ap­pro­pri­ate cor­rec­tive ac­tion".

"The sanc­tions take in­to ac­count Dur­ban and Port of Spain venues' his­to­ry of pro­duc­ing good con­di­tions for in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et and com­mit­ment by both the boards to take ap­pro­pri­ate steps to en­sure sim­i­lar events are not re­peat­ed in fu­ture," an ICC re­lease said.

In all, 11 ses­sions out of 15 were lost to a wet and soft out­field at Kingsmead, while on­ly 22 overs of play were pos­si­ble in the Port-of-Spain Test, with no play at all on days two, three, four and five de­spite large­ly sun­ny weath­er. The out­field was rat­ed as poor by match ref­er­ee Ran­jan Madugalle which led to the QPCC and TTCB launch­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the cause.

Re­ports from sev­er­al agen­cies in­clud­ing the De­part­ments of En­gi­neer­ing and Agri­cul­ture at UWI St. Au­gus­tine, Turf Care So­lu­tions: A Turf Man­age­ment Con­sul­tant and Mon­te­co (the out­field main­te­nance con­trac­tor at QPCC), were ac­quired fol­low­ing their analy­sis of the sit­u­a­tion.

QPCC/TTCB then com­piled a re­port on the find­ings and made rec­om­men­da­tions to pre­vent any re­oc­cur­rence. This re­port was sent to the WICB and then for­ward­ed to the ICC. The re­port points to the ex­ces­sive rain­fall in the pe­ri­od pri­or to and dur­ing the match as the main rea­son for the field be­ing de­clared poor giv­en the high lev­els of sat­u­ra­tion. The match was the first ever to be host­ed at this time of the year in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The sanc­tion im­posed on this oc­ca­sion is an Of­fi­cial Warn­ing. The ICC al­so re­quests, pri­or to the com­mence­ment of the next se­ries dur­ing which match­es are played at this venue, a re­port on the ac­tions tak­en to im­prove the con­di­tion of the out­field, as rec­om­mend­ed in the re­port.

Mean­while, Queen's Park has al­ready be­gun to im­ple­ment the rec­om­men­da­tion re­ceived to avoid a re­peat of this sit­u­a­tion. Queen's Park pres­i­dent Deryck Mur­ray said they will do every­thing in their pow­er to en­sure there is nev­er a re-oc­cur­rence of that prob­lem. "We have al­ready start­ed im­ple­ment­ing rec­om­men­da­tions for a so­lu­tion to the prob­lem and hope­ful­ly we will be ready for lo­cal, re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et very soon" he ex­plained.

The for­mer West In­dies wick­et­keep­er did not give a time­line for the com­ple­tion of work but said they will give se­ri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion to the fact that the sport is played all year round. Ac­cord­ing to Mur­ray, QPCC will work close­ly with the crick­et board to en­sure the prob­lem is rec­ti­fied.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, QPCC and TTCB wish to apol­o­gise to all its stake­hold­ers and the wider crick­et fra­ter­ni­ty for any em­bar­rass­ment which may have been caused by this even­tu­al­i­ty, say­ing it was be­yond its con­trol.


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