BBL 2023 match between Renegades and Scorchers gets suspended due to unsafe pitch

In a recent piece of news, a shocking update arrived from the GMHBA Stadium in South Geelong of Victoria, where a BBL 2023 match was being played between Perth Scorchers and Melbourne Renegades. The match was called off in just 6.5 overs of the first innings due to the unsafe after a complaint and concern raised by the players.

It was a heavy rain on Sunday which compelled the ground staff to work quite a bit hard; furthermore, at the time of the toss, Renegades skipper Nic Maddinson termed the pitch ‘absolutely drenched’ which pushed him to decide to bowl first against the Scorchers.

The decision to call off the match was taken after the scorchers’ batters Josh Inglis and Aaron Hardie raised concern over the inconsistent and uneven bounce on the surface. At the time of the match being called off, Josh Inglis and Aaron Hardie went unbeaten on the individual scores of 3 and 20 runs, respectively, with Perth having 30 runs on the board for the loss of 2 wickets in 6.5 overs.

Here's what the umpire said on the behaviour of the pitch in Geelong

The commentators also called out the surface concern and called it ‘ridiculous’; in the same line of events, umpire Ben Trelobar also spoke about the ‘pitch’ issue which forced them to end the match abruptly just at the beginning of the first innings.

“That last delivery we saw behave quite uncharacteristically, and in our minds, we thought it behaved dangerously so that was the reason for coming off,” said Ben Trelobar to Seven about the bounce of the penultimate deliver of the seventh over, which was also the last ball before the match was called off.

“When we initially started, we saw the pitch, we had a good look at it, [but] until you start playing on it sometimes these things don't present themselves. After the first few overs, we were quite hopeful it was going to be okay but then it started to go south and that last one was enough for us to consider it dangerous,” he added later.