At the annual general meeting held in Truro on January 12, the Cornwall Cricket League missed the opportunity to put right a long-standing problem over the registration rules. Not only did the meeting miss this by turning down a sound proposal, it then passed another rule allowing a second season professional player from wherever to dispense with the normal registration requirements.

So now, a South East Cornwall youngster, returning from college or university out of the county, will enter the county for his summer vacation knowing that he must reside in the county for 21 days before he can be registered. He then must wait another seven days before he can play in a league game at any level.

Admittedly, if the youngster had been born in the county, the residence qualification would be zero, but then, how many south-east Cornwall youngsters have been born in the county in the last 20 years - not many. Meanwhile, the spent professional from the Windies or Pakistan flies in at the start of the second season to land at Newquay, chauffeured to the ground to step into prepared boots, and on to the field without hindrance.

The mere mention of born in Cornwall as a qualification in the playing rules smacks of unjustifiable discrimination and ethnic division, a division that has no place in club cricket.

The placing of a residence qualification, so onerous that those who have business or education commitments outside the county are hardly ever likely to qualify to play, is an utter nonsense. These strange and contrary rules, in a county equally divided by those born and not born in the county, may be part of the ambience that sends youngsters away and the English game into an irreversible decline. Fortunately for the game, most clubs ignore these rules as archaic nonsense.

Unfortunately, it seems, the league management does not have the energy, motivation or capability to drive the nonsense away.

ANDREW LOCKETT

(Name and addressed supplied).

An attender at the meeting