Top umpire Richard Austin has defended the decision to allow last weekend’s First Division 50 over match between Somerset and Western Stars to continue after the pitch had been left completely exposed to rain.Austin and his colleague James McKirdy have come under scrutiny for forcing Stars to bat on a “soaked” Somerset Cricket Club pitch that was left uncovered when rain halted Somerset’s innings seven overs shy of their full quota.Somerset eventually won the match by 115-runs after dismissing the visitors for 46.Promotion hopefuls Stars have since raised concerns about the state of the pitch during their innings to Bermuda Cricket Board (BCB). But when approached on the matter, well-respected umpire Austin gave the pitch a clean bill of health.“Our overriding criteria to abandon a game because of pitch conditions would be if the pitch is playing dangerous. But the pitch was not playing dangerous and a pitch playing difficult or challenging is no reason for umpires to call a game,” he said.“The issues about why it (pitch) was uncovered and stuff like that is a question Somerset has to ask the groundsman that’s an internal question.“Our thing is the pitch playing dangerous, no it did not play dangerous. We look at the conditions; can the batsmen run up and down freely if they have to take runs and can the bowlers bowl freely and not slipping and sliding in their follow through and stuff like that. None of those conditions existed and so for us the pitch was fit to play after the rain.”Stars’ player/coach Andre Manders begs to differ and insists that his team’s batsmen were at a great disadvantage batting in such conditions.“You can’t have one team playing on a dry wicket and then the other on a wet wicket where spin bowlers are bowling bouncers,” he argued. “I just don’t agree how one team can bat on a wicket that’s good and then when we bat the ball is jumping all over the place because the wicket is wet. The weather obviously had a huge effect on the wicket.”Manders said his players reluctantly went to bat on a pitch left exposed to ”torrential downpours” that could not be rolled after the skies cleared because groundstaff did not have access to a lighter roller.“We just said ‘let’s take a chance and see how the wicket plays’ and I told the umpires if it’s bad they are going to have to call the game off,” he added.With Stars reeling at 28 for five chasing a revised target of 136 in 36 overs, Manders said further concerns raised to the umpires about the poor state of the pitch fell on deaf ears.“As soon as I came in I told Richard the wicket is wet and then three balls later I got struck with a ball from Jacobi (Robinson) who was bowling spin. I asked the umpires what’s going to happen but they continued on playing,” he said.“They continued on playing and when you look again we were bowled out for 46 and 18 of those runs were extras.”Somerset have declined to comment on the circumstances surrounding their groundstaff’s failure to cover the pitch before reviewing Stars’ report that was submitted to the BCB.