Now that our game against PH a few weeks back has been sorted by the association I can go into some more details:
The incident itself went like this. One of our batsmen played and missed at a ball. A few of the fielders got stuck into him about his shot (fair play as it was pretty awful). Keeper threw the ball to short cover and at this stage the non striker walked down the wicket to tell him to put the crap shots away. While this was happening short cover ran to the non strikers end and dislodged the bails. A few of their players appealed and our umpire quickly gave it not out as it's a dead ball as soon as the keeper throws the ball to another player and the batters aren't attempting to run. From there the players surrounded the umpire and things started to get nasty. It's very lucky we had the team 'hippie' umpiring who's the most relaxed bloke in the side. If it'd been other blokes I think things would have got out of hand very quickly. Our umpire was abused, and grabbed by one of their players. Our captain went out to try and sort things out and calm them down but was told to f*ck off. It was at this stage they decided to walk off the field. Prior to this incident while they were batting their umpires gave three of their batsmen not out to very plum LBW appeals (I can take that, as we don't have umpires) but they also gave a batsmen a reprieve when he was caught out. It was a full toss, caught at cover. Batsmen then turned around to his mate at square leg and told him surely that's a no ball at which stage he signalled 'no-ball'. I'm thankful we don't have to play them again and in my opinion they should have an umpire every week. However, justice has been served and the league has dealt with the issue. Just wanted to tell everyone exactly what happened.
As a PH player, I am very disappointed to hear this. The team in question I believe is our LO1 team which have come over from another club to play under our banner this season. Unfortunately, these guys are very rarely sited on training nights but I am sure that the club will take a very strong approach with this issue to ensure it doesn't happen again.
What was the punishment by the Association?
G'day Harry,
Yes we were aware they were a new addition to your club as some of the boys had played against some of the players in question when they played for ICC. Personally, I've played against PH many times over the years and never had an issue. I think that's the sad part about all this in that obviously if there is an incident in a game it reflects badly on the club. Really it was only 4 - 6 of their guys that were the issue. The rest stayed out of it and were fine. The league awarded us the win, docked PH 2 points and suspended the captain for two games for not controlling his players and for walking off. As far as we're concerned the issue has been dealt with and I hope the penalty means a similar issue doesn't come up again for other teams. It's LO's not A grade.