Opposition to semifinals' decision

Cost has seen the Lancaster Park-Woolston (LPW) club abandon legal proceedings against Canterbury Cricket.

LPW missed out on qualifying for Sunday's premier grade one-day semifinals, after net run rate was used to separate tied teams. LPW maintained the clubs had been told that "who beat whom" would be used to break deadlocks and, with nothing to the contrary in Canterbury Cricket's handbook, assumed it would be playing East-Shirley at Burwood Park in the match between first and fourth.

Instead the net run rate calculation means St Albans is now the top side and host Burnside West-University on Sunday, with East-Shirley and Old Boys-Collegians meeting in the clash between the second and third-ranked teams.

"The only option open to us was to go to the High Court for an injunction to stop those games from going ahead, but I don't think the cost of somewhere near $10,000 justifies that," LPW president Peter Crowhen said. "In the end, all we've been able to do is register our opposition. We don't believe they (Canterbury Cricket) are right and we believe their changing of rules to suit themselves is not appropriate and we believe that we have a very good case but I'm just not prepared to spend 10 grand on that. I've sent them a fairly terse email this morning suggesting that if they are going to run any competitions in the future, that they get rules in writing before they start and don't dream them up as they go along. If you have deficiencies in the rules, you fix things later. You don't change them mid-stream and that's what they've done here."

Canterbury Cricket chief executive Lee Germon disagreed with Crowhen's assessment, saying everyone had been told net run rate would be used if who beat whom could not produce a definitive answer.

"We certainly haven't changed the rules or re-written the rules."

Partly because there simply are no written rules.

"It's certainly an oversight that it wasn't covered in our handbook and one of the key learnings from this and we've already written it in for next year is that it goes in the handbook," Germon said.

Next season is too late for Crowhen, though.

"I'm hosed off about the fact that administering cricket is starting to become a bit like administering America's Cup yachting. If you've got to start running off to lawyers all the time, then something is rotten in the state of Denmark."

Last night's fourth one day international between New Zealand and Australia at Adelaide was still in progress when our early editions went to press. For the final result and reports on the match go to www.stuff.co.nz

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