Northants win sparks pitch row

County Championship D2, Northampton: Northamptonshire 203 & 243 beat Derbyshire 160 & 106 by 180 runs
Points: Northamptonshire 18, Derbyshire 3

Full scorecard

Graeme Swann spun Northamptonshire to a three-day victory on a pitch which yielded 32 wickets to spinners.

But, despite Derbyshire's appeal on Saturday, an England and Wales Cricket Board pitch panel refused to penalise the home side for a poor pitch.

Off-spinner Swann , who was not even needed in the first innings, claimed a career-best 7-33 on a parched, crumbly wicket on which Derbyshire spinner Nathan Dumelow had taken 10 wickets of his own.

Northants have let the whole division down Derbyshire coach Adrian Pierson

A fuming Derbyshire coach Adrian Pierson branded the pitch panel "a complete joke".

"The fact that umpires reported it on the first day, that [the ECB] thought it worth convening a panel, and the comments in the press all suggest that it was there for everyone to see - the pitch was basically unfit," he said.

Full story: Derbyshire warned over pitch

Derbyshire were themselves handed a suspended points deduction after producing a poor pitch for a Twenty20 Cup match against Nottinghamshire.

"There's complete inequality between one pitch panel and the next. The whole system is ridiculous," Pierson went on.

"This isn't a Northants and Derbyshire thing, but I feel that they've let the whole division down. One of the umpires here told me that he was amazed at the decision."

The panel ruled on Saturday night that the strip was "below average" but not bad enough to require a penalty.

And the first hour's play appeared to support that verdict as openers Michael Di Venuto and Andrew Gait posted 57 without too many alarms.

But that was as good as it got for the Peakites as Swann cut a swathe through the middle order.

He took all his wickets in a single spell of 15.1 overs after Jason Brown, who had taken five first innings wickets, had removed both openers for 29 apiece.

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Northamptonshire: M E K Hussey (Capt), M J Powell, P A Jaques, J W Cook, D J G Sales, G P Swann, B J Phillips, T M B Bailey (Wkt), M S Panesar, A Nel, J F Brown.

Derbyshire: A I Gait, M J Di Venuto, C W G Bassano, M Kaif, N R C Dumelow, L D Sutton (Wkt), D G Cork (Capt), T Lungley, G Welch, K J Dean, L J Wharton.