St. David's not only stuck by their guns and filed an appeal against Mackie Crane's one game ban yesterday morning, but the eastenders went a step further and also handed theBermuda Cricket Board a letter of protest arising out of a conflict in their game against rivals St. George's on Sunday.

The suspension of Crane prompted the club to pull out of Saturday's opening game at St. John's against Premier Division champions Western Stars with the club insisting that ban was unfair since the player was not summoned to a hearing.

Crane had action taken against him after leaving the field of play without notifying the coaches during a recent warm-up match while playing for the Under-21 national squad against the Under-19s at the National Sports Centre.

Meanwhile, the protest that was lodged follows the decision by umpire Leroy Wilson to allow St. George's player Travis Smith to start an 11th at Lords over which the official then stopped two balls in. From that pair of deliveries St. David's scored seven runs which they were then forced to forfeit. Under the rules a player can bowl a maximum of ten overs, but if an over is started it must be completed.

The two incidents have sparked an early season controversy that the Board would like to do without, especially since they have already been confronted with problems of the lack of availability of fields - a problem that led to a number of games not getting underway at the weekend.

St. David's skipper Clay Smith said yesterday the two letters both contained `legitimate' claims and said he expected the Board to respond quickly and give the fairest ruling possible.

"I strongly feel that we have legitimate concerns in both instances and hopefully we will get a positive response from the Board as soon as possible so that we will know where we stand," said Smith.

He said his team had not wanted to withdraw from Saturday's game, but noted that the general consensus at the club was that their player was treated unfairly - it was not normal for a player to be unable to defend himself at a hearing.

"It's unfortunate that we had to take the stand that we took, but too many times in the past we have felt that we have been dictated to and basically we decided that this will no longer be the case," Smith said. "We intended to show our support for our player on principle and this is what we did."

According to the skipper the club made a valiant effort to have the matter sorted out early after being notified of the ban on Thursday.

Smith said that both national coach Mark Harper and BCB executive member Neil Speight were informed that it was highly possible that St. David's would not play the game if the player did not have a hearing.

"We were informed by them that we should write a letter to (the BCB) requesting that Mackie's suspension be lifted until such a hearing, but we felt that they should be the ones to write us to advise that they had erred and that the player would be eligible to play until a hearing is formerly arranged," he said.

"The only reason we showed up at St. John's Field on Saturday was in hope that somebody from the BCB would come there and try to rectify the problem.

"Our feeling was that they would try to avoid any further controversy prior to the start of the season, but as things turned out nobody showed up and you have to wonder if they are there for the best interest of the sport."

In regards to the umpiring situation, Smith said that the official made an error in not allowing a bowler to complete an over that he started, regardless if it was the 11th over.

He admits that he does not know if the decision would have changed the outcome of a game that his team lost by one run, but the error did have a major impact at that stage.

"They shouldn't have stopped that over," he said. "We had already scored seven runs off the first two balls and at that stage it was very crucial, every run counted and to restart the over just wasn't on.

"I don't think we got four runs from it, so that was a major difference in what could have been a big over for us coming down the stretch."