It’s a viral scandal from the stereotypically genteel and gentle world of English village cricket.

It has made headlines around the world, been decried by Piers Morgan and become the subject of some extraordinary internet sleuthing.

Welcome to ‘Clicky Ponting’ or, if you are a fan of a slightly more niche reference, ‘Snapil Dev’ (references to former cricketers Ricky Ponting and Kapil Dev).

It all stems from an amateur match played in the north of England, specifically the North Yorkshire and South Durham league’s Division Two game last Saturday between Saltburn Cricket Club Second XI and Norton Cricket Club.

We join the action as Saltburn bowler Sam Morrison trundles in and sends down a delivery to Norton batter Noman Shabir. The ball appears to go past the edge of Shabir’s bat and into wicketkeeper Josh Bowes’ gloves.

The fielders, though, have heard something: they think Shabir hit the ball, appeal to the umpire and he gives the batter out, caught behind.

Shabir appears flabbergasted. His initial reaction is to point at the first-slip fielder, and then protests to the umpire, all to no avail. The Saltburn players celebrate as normal. They went on to win the game by 159 runs, cementing their position at the top of the Division Two table.

And that’s where the sleuthing began.

An amateur cricketer called Ben Mummery posted a clip on social media, zoomed in on the fielder standing at first slip — the nearest position behind the wicketkeeper and to his right. This clip appears to show this fielder clicking his fingers at the moment the ball goes past the edge of the bat, which could easily have made it sound like there had been contact between the two, thus tricking the umpire into giving Shabir out.

The logical conclusion is that the fielder was clicking his fingers deliberately to try to deceive the umpire into thinking the batter had hit the ball when he hadn’t.

@Saltburncc First slip clicks his fingers to imitate an edge, bat nowhere near it and given out.
This is about the worst case of cheating I’ve ever seen in cricket.
Apparently, their keeper has a huge amount of catches this season.@talkSPORT @bbctms @SkyCricket @TailendersPod pic.twitter.com/iM7lZfKF5q

— Ben Mummery (@ben_mummery) July 27, 2026

Then, more sleuthing: further clips were posted of other Saltburn games which appeared to show the same fielder doing the same thing — clicking his fingers as the ball passed the bat, to give the impression the batter had hit it.

Others went through the records of Saltburn matches to discover how many times opposition batters had been given out caught behind. In one recent game, that number reached eight, which is incredibly high (the record for dismissals by this method in a single Test match innings is seven).

Some satisfied themselves with coming up with as many cricket-related puns to apply to the incident as possible.

The incident was then reported to the league, which confirmed on Monday that it was initiating “a full investigation”.

Saltburn Cricket Club, North Yorkshire, in July 2024 (MI News/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

What is claimed to be the name of the fielder in question has since appeared on social media, but The Athletic has been unable, at the time of writing, to definitively verify his identity. He did not respond when contacted by The Athletic. He has been named by the UK’s Daily Mail newspaper, which reports a local Indian restaurant that sponsors the player declared itself “disgusted” by the clips.

When contacted by The Athletic, Norton CC referred all questions to the league. The league did not respond to a request for comment. It did release a statement on Monday which said: “The league have received a formal complaint regarding alleged incidents in a Division Two game on Saturday. A full investigation has been initiated, and until such time as the formal processes are complete, no further comment will be made.”

The Athletic contacted several representatives of Saltburn Cricket Club, none of whom had responded at the time of writing.

This is, given the level of cricket involved, a relatively low-wattage incident, but there are echoes of similar scandals in the sport — most notably ‘Sandpapergate’ when, during a 2018 Test match against South Africa, Australia batter Cameron Bancroft was caught on camera applying sandpaper to the ball in order to alter its condition, making it more difficult to hit when bowled.

Bancroft, Australia’s captain Steve Smith and their vice-captain David Warner were all subsequently banned from international cricket for between nine and 12 months.

It also called to mind the Houston Astros sign-stealing scandal in baseball, when they were found guilty of using an array of audio cues, most notoriously banging on a trash can, to relay pitch signs from the opposition’s catcher to their hitters. The Astros were fined $5million (£3.75m), and both manager AJ Hinch and general manager Jeff Luhnow were suspended from all baseball activities for a year.

The Saltburn incident is a particularly 2026 ‘scandal’.

Clicking your fingers to give the impression of ball hitting bat is something anyone who has played cricket at any level will be familiar with, although typically during pre-match messing around, rather than during competitive games. But in previous years there has been no way of being sure if it has happened during play, so who knows how many people have done it at amateur levels and got away with it?

Source footage: Saltburn Cricket Club

It has come to light this time because of something called a FrogBox, which is essentially a fixed camera that films games at this level of cricket.

Clubs who are registered with Play-Cricket, a website which collates the scorecards and records of amateur teams in England, have the option to install a FrogBox at their ground, and the footage is then available for streaming and uploaded to Play-Cricket. You can browse scorecards from each game, and watch replays of individual wickets: here is the scorecard for the match in question.

There is then the interesting question of how this is technically cheating.

“Clicking your fingers to deceive the umpire into thinking a batter has hit the ball when they haven’t” is one of those things that obviously is cheating, but it’s such a strange and rare occurrence that there isn’t actually anything specific in the Laws of Cricket that prohibits it.

Law 41.4 says that a deliberate attempt to distract a batter should result in a five-run penalty to the batting team, but that’s not quite what this is.

Law 41.2 — ‘unfair actions’ — is probably the section that would be most applicable, given that this is a catch-all provision that states “the umpires shall be the sole judges of fair and unfair play”, and essentially says that if anything occurs on the field that the umpires deem to be unfair, then they can take appropriate action, in the form of a warning or a five-run penalty.

All of that is if such an incident was caught on the field of play, though. Saltburn and the player in question are being investigated retrospectively by the league, meaning in theory they will be judged against the North Yorkshire and South Durham league’s General Conduct Regulations.

Again, there is no specific provision made in that code for the clicking of fingers, but there are four levels of misconduct listed.

Even clearer, watch his left hand, this was from last year when they needed 1 wicket and the other team needed 4 runs. pic.twitter.com/ukiiJZtmXl

— Zacbfc (@Zacbfc1233) July 27, 2026

Level four involves acts of actual violence, so it probably won’t be that. Level three includes reference to “intimidating an umpire by language or gesture”, which doesn’t quite feel fitting but, if stretched, deception like this could be classed as a form of intimidation. Level two includes ‘rule 1.m’, which says a player shall be disciplined if they commit “any other misconduct, the nature of which is, in the opinion of the umpires, equivalent to a level-two offence”.

The code states that punishments can range from a seven-day ban and £50 fine for a first-time, level-one offence, up to a one-year ban and £250 fine for a third offence in the space of two years. The league did not respond when asked for guidance on how this incident will be judged.

So now we wait to discover what will become of Saltburn Cricket Club and their players.

This incident, while at a low level, has been the talk of cricket in England for a few days. It’s been all over social media too, and anyone involved in a cricket-related WhatsApp group cannot have failed to know all about it and probably involved themselves in giddy dissection of the incident, analysing the footage like it’s the Zapruder film of the Kennedy assassination.

It might depress those at the top of the English game that this has been the hot topic, rather than their flagship tournament, The Hundred, which is theoretically happening somewhere in the country right now.

The time has come for Josh Acheampong to be playing regular first-team football. The problem is how.

Acheampong is facing the football equivalent of being stuck between a rock and a hard place.

On the one hand, Chelsea value their academy graduate so highly they have labelled him one of their ‘untouchables’ and consistently rebuffed approaches from other teams seeking his signature. To have such a big club hold you in such esteem is great, right?

Well, yes. It’s just that, compared with the other players Chelsea included on the ‘not for sale list’ going into the current transfer window — Cole Palmer, Reece James, Joao Pedro, Estevao Willian, Moises Caicedo, Levi Colwill and Jorrel Hato — Acheampong is unlikely to benefit from the consistent run of first-team matches you need, especially at 20, for your game to kick on.

It is just over two years since Acheampong made his professional debut, under Mauricio Pochettino, as a late substitute against Tottenham Hotspur. The landmark event came three days before he turned 18. Happy birthday indeed.

The defender has been given game time since then, an achievement in itself when you have come through an academy as competitive as the one at Chelsea. In 2024-25, he made 13 appearances, including 10 starts. Sure, the majority of those starts were in the UEFA Conference League — seven, in all — with only 169 minutes out of his 871 coming in the Premier League, but there was plenty of cause for optimism.

Josh Acheampong has found opportunities limited since breaking into the Chelsea first team (Adrian Dennis/AFP via Getty Images)

Chelsea can rightly point to how every one of those numbers went up last season — 30 appearances, 14 starts and 663 of his 1,295 minutes came in the top flight. He also came on for the second half of the second leg in the Champions League round of 16 defeat by Paris Saint-Germain. Chelsea lost 3-0 on the night and 8-2 on aggregate, but what a chance to learn being on the same pitch as Ousmane Dembele, Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, Vitinha and Bradley Barcola.

However, the figure of just 10 Premier League starts in those two seasons paints Acheampong’s situation in a rather different light.

His overall return in terms of top-flight activity does not exactly scream ‘untouchable’ status, and neither do some of Chelsea’s actions.

Last summer, they tried to sign Dean Huijsen, then 20, from Bournemouth but lost out to Real Madrid. Another young centre-back, Jeremy Jacquet, also 20 at the time, was the subject of bids from the west London club in January before he ended up joining Liverpool.

Buying a centre-half had been Chelsea’s priority for this window, too, and last week they agreed the £52million ($69.1m) signing of Maxence Lacroix from Crystal Palace. At 26, the Frenchman is deemed a ready-made playing partner for Levi Colwill, now fully fit again after last season’s long-term injury. They have also shown great interest in Como’s Jacobo Ramon, 21, and enquired about 32-year-old John Stones, the 94-cap England international who is a free agent this summer after leaving Manchester City, before securing Lacroix.

In other words, Chelsea have continued to look elsewhere despite their appreciation for Acheampong’s talent — and that has sent out a confusing message.

Josh Acheampong joins Levi Colwill in a Chelsea training session during their ongoing tour (Ayush Kumar/Getty Images)

Now a new manager in Xabi Alonso, plus those who run Chelsea, are under pressure to secure positive results when the games begin in earnest next month. It is a big call to put all your trust in a relatively inexperienced academy player who is inevitably going to make a mistake or two along the way, and will need some extra protection as well as patience on the pitch while he develops.

There is a frustrated fanbase to consider, too. They want success for the club and voice their displeasure when that does not happen.

There are also players in the first-team dressing room who play the same position, such as Wesley Fofana, and are on significantly higher wages than Acheampong. If they and he are not selected, who is going to cause the biggest fuss?

Fofana has had plenty of opportunities to justify his £69.5million acquisition from Leicester City in 2022, as well as his sizeable salary. He has yet to do so. And yet the early indications are that he remains ahead of Acheampong in the pecking order under Alonso, and that is even before Lacroix joins up with the squad after World Cup duty with France.

Even though he came on as a second-half substitute in the first competitive pre-season friendly against Western Sydney Wanderers on Tuesday (with starters Acheampong and Tosin Adarabioyo going off at that point), Fofana was the one who played next to guaranteed first-teamer and fellow replacement Colwill for the final half-hour.

Josh Acheampong in action against Crystal Palace in 2025 (Ben Stansall/AFP via Getty Images)

At first glance, Acheampong being in the starting XI for that 6-4 win looks like a very good thing. But he was the only ‘untouchable’ in a team made up of fringe players — Tosin, Dario Essugo and Liam Delap — and other talented academy products or youngsters such as Reggie Walsh, Reggie Watson, Dastan Satpaev, Ryan Kavuma-McQueen and Landon Emenalo.

It was a similar story in the two friendlies staged behind closed doors before this tour to Australia and East Asia began in Sydney, against EFL sides Crawley Town and Bromley respectively, when Acheampong was the one coming on as a second-half sub.

If he is not playing with the A-team now, it does not bode well for the beginning of the campaign proper, when all the squad are likely to be available.

Football is about taking your chances when they come, of course, and Acheampong did not shine next to Tosin with teenagers Emenalo and Olutayo Subuloye at full-back yesterday. That was untimely.

Josh Acheampong did not put in a perfect display against Western Sydney Wanderers (Saeed Khan/AFP via Getty Images)

With Chelsea not involved in European competition in 2026-27, Acheampong’s task of improving on last season’s numbers looks harder, not easier.

His chances of playing right-back have dropped, due to this month’s acquisition of 21-year-old Marco Palestra from Atalanta. Also, even if some team meet Chelsea’s £75million asking price for Malo Gusto, club captain James remains an obstacle between him and game time at that position, on top of the highly rated Palestra.

Would a loan be the next best thing? Maybe, but there is always the risk Acheampong would be swapping one bench for another.

James (Wigan Athletic) and Colwill (Huddersfield Town and Brighton and Hove Albion) serve as examples of what a significant impact a good loan away from Chelsea can have, but there are far more cases of the club’s academy talent being wooed away by a manager, only to discover they are just cover at their temporary club in case of injury.

Should Acheampong stay at Chelsea, he looks to be facing a third successive season of being played only in fits and starts, so it is going to be difficult for him to fulfil his potential if that remains the case.

The counter-argument is that something is better than nothing, and he does still have age on his side. Plus he will have the chance to be tutored by Alonso, a man who played for Liverpool, Madrid, Bayern Munich and Spain. That might constitute a better education than being farmed out elsewhere.

Clubs who continue to cast admiring glances in his direction will be encouraged by the fact that, if Chelsea do not want to cash in now, Acheampong will have just two years left on his contract at the end of this season even if no extension is agreed. At that stage, a club have to think a lot more about accepting a high bid there for fear of the value depreciating as the player edges closer to free-agent status.

Chelsea have developed a fine player and their stance in wanting to keep Acheampong is understandable. But neither club nor player stand to benefit if he does not feature more often on the pitch in the season ahead.

The arrival of Danny Imray at Crystal Palace as a 17-year-old from non-League Chelmsford City whipped up little expectation.

A 2021 signing for what was then the Under-23 side, the hope was he might one day develop into a first-team contender rather than being earmarked as a guaranteed future Palace player.

Palace recognised his potential at that age and brought him in without much risk for in effect a nominal fee. An exciting, attacking full-back, Imray progressed well. Now, three loan spells on, he has been left out of Palace’s squad for the Como Cup this week and is close to joining Wrexham for a fee that could rise above £5million ($6.6m).

It is the type of deal Palace should be aiming to replicate.

Danny Imray impressed during his latest loan spell at West Bromwich Albion last season (Simon Galloway/Getty Images)

They did something similar with Justin Devenny, bringing him in from Scottish Championship side Airdrie in August 2023. Devenny was 19 and, after standing out for the under-21s, has now made 60 appearances for Palace’s first team in all competitions.

Many have been as a substitute, but he has established himself as capable back-up and cover in midfield. There are obvious limitations to his game, such as an over-dependence on his left foot, but his endeavour and work rate have proven valuable to mitigate the shortcomings.

If he were to be sold now, he would command a not-insignificant fee. Alternatively, he may continue to offer an extra option from the bench at Palace when others are tiring in the latter part of a game, and he would do so at a lower cost than if Palace signed someone else to act as cover.

Even after 13 years in the Premier League, Palace do not have the financial might to sign expensive players to be squad options. Bringing them up from the academy or under-21 side, or signing young talent from elsewhere and developing them, is the model to which they must aspire.

Justin Devenny has proved a useful squad player for Crystal Palace (Richard Pelham/Getty Images)

Imray’s pathway was different to Devenny’s. He spent his time out on loan and never made a senior appearance at his parent club. But in achieving such a high fee for the 23-year-old, Palace have done well. It is something they must replicate with low-risk signings who could develop into players who can be sold on for a sizeable profit.

They did the same with defender Jake O’Brien, who arrived at the same time as Imray and is now a Republic of Ireland international at Everton. Signed from Cork City, his striking physical presence was always an advantage and the hope was he might progress. In the end, Palace did not feel he was likely to be at the required level to play for their first team in the Premier League.

But successful loans with Swindon Town and RWD Molenbeek were beneficial to his development. He joined Lyon for an initial £1m before Palace earned a further £3.2m courtesy of a sell-on clause when he moved to Merseyside in July 2024.

He has made 64 appearances in the two years since, but Palace’s defence at the time of his departure was settled and he would not have had many opportunities had he stayed. Furthermore, he had entered the final year of his contract and had no intention of signing a new one in part due to that lack of pathway into the senior side.

In that context, selling was a sensible decision, particularly with the insertion of the sell-on.

That Palace will have earned nearly £10m for two players signed on the same day as hopeful punts rather than certain prospects is promising. Learning when the optimum time is to sell is as important as identifying and developing talents in the first place.

It applies to academy graduates, too. Jesurun Rak-Sakyi, picked up when he was released by Chelsea’s Under-18s, was close to a permanent departure last summer at the end of the transfer window but ended up out on loan instead. The intention from Palace was to sell but a deal could not be completed. That would have earned them around £10m.

Crystal Palace benefited from a sell-on clause when Jake O’Brien left Lyon for Everton (Alex Livesey/Getty Images)

Midfielder David Ozoh has enjoyed successful back-to-back loans with Derby County in the Championship. He is likely to be loaned out again in the hope he continues his development, but if he is not wanted by manager Pierre Sage this season, he would command a decent fee on the back of his performances in the second tier.

Imray might have been sold last season, before his loan stints at Blackpool and West Bromwich Albion. Sources familiar to the situation, speaking anonymously to protect relationships, have told The Athletic that a League One club bid £750,000 for his services, but Palace opted not to take up the offer. He then progressed further and his value subsequently increased.

These fees are always likely to be lower than those achieved by selling genuine first-team contenders, but they accumulate and afford greater leeway in the transfer window. It can be the difference as to whether Palace can afford to buy an extra player or not.

It will not always work out, as was the case with Craig Farquhar, Dylan Reid or Rylan Brownlie in the under-21s, or Luke Plange and Malcolm Ebiowei, both signed from Derby in 2022. But within reason, so long as players are well scouted, the policy is logical and one Palace would be wise to pursue.