Groundsman takes blame for abandoned match at Sir Viv stadium

ST. JOHN’S, An­tigua – A dark cloud hung over the Sir Vi­vian Richards Sta­di­um on Tues­day, not from the Caribbean sun, but from a pitch that proved too dan­ger­ous for first-class crick­et.

Fol­low­ing the aban­don­ment of the West In­dies Cham­pi­onship fix­ture be­tween Trinidad & To­ba­go Red Force and the Lee­ward Is­lands Hur­ri­canes, chief grounds­man Norville Si­mon has stepped for­ward to ac­cept full re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

In a can­did and emo­tion­al ad­mis­sion, Si­mon de­scribed the aban­don­ment as one of the most heart­break­ing mo­ments of his ca­reer.

“To be hon­est, that was one of the most heart­break­ing feel­ings that I’ve had in years,” Si­mon said. “I’ve nev­er felt like this, but again, these things hap­pen, and I’m mak­ing no ex­cus­es.”

The match was called off on the third day af­ter a ter­ri­fy­ing de­liv­ery from Test fast bowler Jay­den Seales. Lee­ward Is­lands seam­er Je­re­mi­ah Louis was struck on the hel­met by a ball that reared sharply from a good length.

Louis was prompt­ly tak­en to the Sir Lester Bird Med­ical Cen­tre but was lat­er cleared and dis­charged. The in­ci­dent came af­ter a chaot­ic 147 overs that saw more than 25 wick­ets tum­ble, with the Lee­wards hold­ing a 96-run lead when play was halt­ed.

Si­mon ad­mit­ted to pre-match con­cerns but in­sist­ed he did not fore­see the lev­el of dan­ger. He point­ed to a spe­cif­ic crack as the root cause of the chaos.

“There was a part on the Sir Andy Roberts end, on the left-hand side of the pitch, there was a crack on the off­side of it that I did not see,” Si­mon ex­plained. “Had I seen it, I would have dealt with it, and that was the on­ly is­sue. For me, every­thing else was fine. No­body re­al­ly came to me di­rect­ly, but I’ve heard one or two play­ers speak about the crack. That was of no ma­jor con­cern to me be­cause that was re­al­ly out of the play­ing area.”

While the crack might have been off the typ­i­cal bat­ting line, its ef­fect was un­de­ni­able. Seales was vir­tu­al­ly un­playable, claim­ing sev­en wick­ets in the sec­ond in­nings to go with three in the first.

Ear­li­er on the fate­ful third morn­ing, he had Jah­mar Hamil­ton caught at sec­ond slip af­ter a rear­ing ball found the glove, just three balls af­ter strik­ing tow­er­ing all­rounder Rah­keem Corn­wall on the shoul­der with a bounc­er.

De­spite the hor­ror show, Si­mon vowed that the shame of Tues­day would nev­er be re­peat­ed. Prais­ing his hard-work­ing staff, he is­sued a solemn promise to the na­tion of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da.

“From now on, I’m mak­ing this promise to the na­tion of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da and to the man­age­ment and staff of Sir Viv that once I’m here, we will def­i­nite­ly try to put things in place so that this nev­er hap­pens again.”

(CMC)