Kent chairman asks counties to reconsider

Kent chairman Carl Openshaw has written to the four counties who rejected the ECB's proposal to award Kent an extra five points for their abandoned match at New Road, asking them to reconsider their decision in light of the exceptional circumstances.

Durham, Lancashire, Warwickshire and Yorkshire refused to support the proposal to award Kent five additional points. But Openshaw picks out a series of arguments in Kent's favour and highlights that they have been the innocent party after Worcestershire's decision to stage the match at New Road so soon after the flooding.

Worcestershire have since admitted it was a misguided decision and originally the ECB said the game would be replayed. However, after further matches were badly hit by the weather that decision was overturned, although Openshaw asks the county chairman to consider the different circumstances.

"It is important to recognise that the failure to start and the subsequent abandonment of the match [at New Road] had nothing to do with prevailing weather conditions," he wrote. "In contrast with the Roses match played over the same period, the weather had been relatively fine in Worcester in the days leading up to the match.

"Whereas almost all league matches in the Manchester area that weekend were cancelled because of bad weather, local league games in the Worcester area proceeded uninterrupted.

"There is surely no comparison between matches which, as happens in most seasons, are affected by heavy rain shortly before and during the game and the unprecedented situation of a ground under 12 feet of water 10 days before the scheduled start of a Championship match."