Hampshire have been deducted three points in the County Championship for preparing a “below average” pitch for their match against Essex in July.
A further 20-point penalty has been suspended until the end of next season, with the club also fined £5,000.
Essex won the match at the Ageas Bowl inside three days, with only 506 runs coming across the four innings.
The deduction means Hampshire, third in Division One, are now 52 points behind leaders Surrey with two games to play.
The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) charged the county with failing to comply with regulation 8.1 of its pitch regulations, which requires each county to “actively seek to prepare the best quality cricket pitch that it can for the match that it is staging” – a decision which was upheld by an independent cricket discipline commission panel.
In the decision document, it is stated that the Hampshire groundsman was asked to prepare a pitch capable of “bringing seam back into the game more”.
The panel said that request meant there was a “failure” by the club “to seek to prepare the best possible pitch” for the match.
Both the panel and the ECB agreed there was no premeditated effort to prepare a substandard pitch, but added that had the groundsman “set out to prepare a good or above average pitch, he would have achieved that”.
“The club has not demonstrated that it is more likely than not that, acting reasonably, it sought to prepare the best quality cricket pitch for the match,” the panel added.
Hampshire have accepted the pitch grading and apologised, with the panel taking into account that it was the club’s first such offence.
