In the final round of the 1979 Benson & Hedges Cup in a one-day cricket match, the Somerset County Cricket Club faced the Worcester County Cricket Club on May 24, 1979 on the New Road in Worcester. The results of the game will help determine which teams have advanced to the quarterfinals. If Somerset lost the game and Glamorgan won the game, Somerset, Worcestershire and Glamorgan could have kept their points unchanged. The bowling strike rate will be used as a tiebreaker. Under the leadership of captain Brian Rose, the Somerset team realized that if they hit the ball first and closed the game after announcing the end, it would protect their strike rate advantage. To ensure their qualifications. Somerset scored a goal from their game and announced; Worcestershire made ten deliveries to win the two runs they needed to win. The game was completed in 18 minutes and only 16 legal deliveries were made.
Although Somerset's statement was in accordance with the rules of the game, Rose was condemned by the press and cricket officials. The Wisden Cricketer’s Almanac claimed that Rose “deliberately lost the game, thereby sacrificing all known cricket rules”. Only one week after the game ended, the Test and County Cricket Committee held an emergency meeting and voted 17 votes to 1 to remove Somerset from the game. The rules of cricket were later changed to prohibit announcements in professional one-day cricket matches, despite similar incidents in club cricket in 2017.