The story behind the Rawalpindi pitch penalty

A social spat, a rubbish pitch and a worse system

You might have noticed I dropped a news article recently. When Pakistan decided to appeal the ICC's decision to award them a demerit point for the first Test against England. 

If a ground gets five points in five years, it can face a suspension from hosting international cricket for 12 months. And it received another a few months earlier for the match against Australia. So it makes sense they would contest it. 

But it all gets more fun as former Pakistan Cricket Board chairman Ramiz Raja called the pitch embarrassing. Remember this was the same person who told commentators to mention how flat the pitches were against Australia. 

So you are not going to be shocked that the appeal was done after Raja was removed from that position. 

And you want something else fun. Sethi took over as the head of an interim management committee now running the board on December 22, nine days after the ICC announced the sanction. On December 26, the PCB officially appealed the decision. Since the 22nd, Raja and Sethi have been treading insults which I think were at their best when on New Year's Eve Sethi was sending out infographics attacking the other PCB head honcho records. 

Najam Sethi @najamsethi

It gets funner because Pakistan captain Babar Azam expressed his unhappiness with the pitch as well.

"Yes my input was there in the preparation of the pitch and we made it clear what we wanted but we didn't get that because of the weather or whatever reason… we wanted a track with some turn for the spinners," Babar had said.

Should we make this all the funnest ever. Despite the pitch being very flat, there was a result. Which you know will be used to prove the pitch wasn't that flat by the PCB. That means they will need to talk about how England absolutely smashed their bowlers into oblivion on day one.