Kent weigh up options over Worcestershire abandonment

Kent are considering taking legal action in their bid to challenge the ECB's decision to award them only four points for the abandoned match against Worcestershire at Kidderminster in July.

The Championship match was scheduled for Worcester's New Road even though the ground had been under several feet of water less than a fortnight earlier. In the event, there was no play in the Kent match, and Mark Newton, Worcestershire's chairman, admitted the decision to stage the game was financial.

Initially, the ECB ordered the game to be replayed, but that decision was overturned by the first-class counties and it was treated as an abandoned match with each side being awarded four points.

The ECB then proposed that Kent be awarded five extra points to compensate them, but the idea was turned down by four counties - Lancashire, Yorkshire, Durham and Warwickshire. With Kent now second from bottom, nine points adrift of Warwickshire albeit with a game in hand, the issue is growing in importance all the time.

"I am prepared to take it further, and I am planning to speak to the ECB soon," Carl Openheimer, Kent's chairman told Steve James in The Sunday Telegraph. "When this matter first arose we still had hopes of winning the Championship. Now the situation is very different. But I don't want to be seen as whingeing after the event so we will be reviewing our options swiftly."