Clay Smith has vowed that Cleveland will fight to keep hold of the Eastern Counties Cup and has argued that his team did not break any rules during Saturday’s game against Bailey’s Bay.

The champions were stripped of their title on Sunday night at an emergency meeting of the Eastern Counties Cricket Association, when in a nine-to-five vote committee members decided to award the cup to Bay.

Yesterday, the ECCA officially confirmed the decision and said that Cleveland were appealing the ruling, which came as a result of the significant time-wasting and reported verbal threats towards umpires that Cleveland players made at Lord’s.

“The ECCA is continuing its deliberations into the game held on July 18 between champions Cleveland County Cricket Club and challengers Bailey’s Bay Cricket Club,” the Eastern Counties said in a statement yesterday.

“An emergency meeting of the associates in which the game manager’s report was presented for consideration was held on July 19. As a result, a motion was presented and the resultant vote was to award Bailey’s Bay Cricket Club the Eastern County trophy.

“Cleveland County Cricket Club expressed their desire to, and will be allowed to, appeal the decision. A final decision to award the Eastern County Cup will be made once the appeal process has been completed. Further announcements on the Eastern County Trophy presentation will be made once the appeal process has been completed.”

While disappointed with the ruling Smith believes that the ECCA have no grounds to take the cup away, and said that his players’ bad behaviour was not a reason to do so.

“Obviously I think it is unjust but this is not the end of it,” Smith said.

“Cleveland will definitely meet on it, and take the necessary steps to try to get this rectified. I understand people are upset with the players and their behaviour, but they can’t use the players’ behaviour to take the cup away.”

Cleveland are likely to use the ECCA’s own words against it as part of their defence, pointing to the association’s statement immediately after the game which said the match had “ended according to the rules of the Eastern County Cricket Association.”

The rules of the ECCA dictate that the game must stop at 7.20pm, which it did, with umpires James McKirdy and Oscar Andrade pulling stumps despite Bay being just one run from victory. However, more than 40 minutes was lost during Bay’s innings due to Cleveland leaving the field of play in protest at several decisions which went against them, while Cleveland also bowled painfully slowly in a calculated attempt to deny Bay the chance to get the runs.

It is the rule governing time, and the ECCA’s statement that Smith believes means his side should not lose the cup.

“If the game ended according to those rules, and there were no other rules in place to warrant time added on, then they have no grounds to overturn the result,” Smith said. “We’re definitely not going to sit down and take this lightly, it’s something we worked extremely hard for and we’ll try to get the ruling overturned.”