Cricketers bowled out by the rule book

A Welsh team has been kicked out of the national village cricket championship for breaking the rules of the gentleman's game - by coming from a town.

A Welsh team has been kicked out of the national village cricket championship for breaking the rules of the gentleman's game - by coming from a town.

The batsmen and bowlers of Usk, Monmouthshire, beat their opponents from Werrington in Cornwall by a single run last weekend in a nail-biting finale to enter the quarter finals of the UK-wide contest.

But jubilation turned to sorrow when The Cricketer magazine, the organiser of the National Village Cricket Championship, decreed that Usk had entered the competition under false pretences.

Their Cornish opponents formally complained after being greeted by a road sign reading "Welcome to Usk, Historic Market Town" when they arrived for their amateur showdown last Saturday.

Further suspicions were raised when a trawl of the internet by Werrington supporters revealed a website proclaiming "Welcome to Usk Town" and the existence of an Usk town council and mayor.

A special adjudication committee from The Cricketer met on Wednesday to decide that Usk, population 2,187 and a competitor in the championship since 1990, had to go.

The decision has left Usk Cricket Club beside itself at what it calls "hair-splitting nonsense". It may not be cricket but it is geographical semantics gone mad, according to the Welsh team's backers.

After all, the club says, the rules governing the village championships state that the criteria for entry is for each team to be drawn from a population of no more than 3,000 and surrounded by countryside.

Jake Roderick, a telecommunications contractor and Usk's vice-captain, said: "It is utterly ridiculous. Usk is a village surrounded by fields. We meet the entrance criteria through and through.

"What Werrington have got upset about is a few gimmicks used to market the place to visitors. You can hardly call it a historic market village, can you?"

Ejection from the contest has proved a particularly bitter pill to swallow for Mr Roderick and his teammates because they have got further than ever before in the contest, the final of which is held at Lord's.

"We were just two games away from playing at the home of cricket itself," he said. "You can't describe how important that would have been. We are talking about going to the hallowed turf."