Appeal favours Radlett

3:55pm Tuesday 17th June 2008

Radlett have won an appeal against the Home Counties League after a ruling that their two Middlesex players, Gareth Berg and Kabir Toor, were not permitted to play in the same team.

But the Cobden Hill club will have to wait a month in any case before they can select their two stars together because all-rounder Berg is out for a month after straining a side muscle bowling for Middlesex against Essex in the recent LV Championship match at Lord's.

Radlett fell foul of a league regulation stipulating that no two contracted professional players could play in the same side unless they had been members for two years.

The club's argument that all-rounder Berg was not contracted when he joined the club from Stevenage seeking better cricket last year was rejected - and subsequently accepted by an independent appeal panel. Toor, still at school in London, signed a contract that was not due to start until July, but he was forced to step down into Radlett's second team, the new leaders of Herts League Division Two.

Tony Johnson, Radlett's chairman, welcomed the appeal decision. "We fully accept the thrust of the regulation, designed to stop groups of professionals going to one club, but our case was nothing like this," he said. "Gareth joined us in the hope of moving on to professional cricket, but this was far from guaranteed. Kabir actually played for us a few times as a colt."

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