On the opening day of their eventual innings victory, Northants No. 4 Rob Keogh injected life into his side’s innings, helping them recover from 36-3 with a counter-attacking 66. His dismissal late in the day was tinged with more than a hint of controversy, however.

Off the second ball of the 32nd over, an Ollie Robinson delivery struck the pad of Keogh before looping into the hands of Aaron Thomason at second slip. Thomason, seeing Keogh out of his ground, attempted to throw the ball at the stumps but missed by some distance, nearly hitting the batsman to the extent that Keogh fell to the turf to avoid the errant shy.

The standing umpires, who at this point had not made any form of decision, then strode towards each other and briefly conferred before giving a bemused Keogh out; the scorecard read that Keogh was given out caught.

Remarking on the incident, one of the commentators on the live feed stated: “There was no celebration of it being caught because he didn’t hit it. For some reason the umpire at the standing end – Paul Baldwin – conversed with the square-leg [umpire] to determine whether the ball had been hit [rather than whether it carried to the fielder] because, obviously, the ball was caught at head height. I think that’s a very poor piece of umpiring, I’m sorry.”

A tweet from the official Northants account suggested that there was at least mild dissatisfaction at the decision from the Northants camp. Wisden.com contacted the county for comment on the dismissal but Northants decided against making a public statement on the incident.

You can watch the incident here: