Blackhawks and cricket association head to court

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The Liberta Sports Club has initiated court action against the Antigua and Barbuda Cricket Association (ABCA) over what they believe is the body’s failure to grant them an appeal hearing. 
This was confirmed by President of the sports club and former West Indies fast bowler, Kenneth Benjamin, who said lawyers opened the process after a deadline of November 20, which was previously given to the association elapsed.    
“The process is on its way and it is fairly easy because what we are asking the court for is to instruct the cricket association to let us have our appeal, so hopefully they will be served shortly; all we want is our appeal. They don’t have a right to say we can’t have an appeal, that is natural justice so that is what we are going to court for, to have our appeal heard,” he said.  
The PIC Liberta Blackhawks, in July, had appealed an earlier decision by the association’s disciplinary committee to award the Two Day finals to Empire Nation after the match was called off following a dispute over whether an Empire player should be allowed to bat at the time he was sent to the crease.
The association, in a press release issued in July, announced that Empire Nation was awarded the match based on the report written by the officials when the incident occurred in June.
Benjamin said however, the Liberta Sports Club never asked the cricket association to overturn the decision of the match officials. 
“We said we didn’t ask you to change anything, we just asked you to allow us to appeal a decision so we didn’t ask them to change anything so why are they saying to us that they are not in any position to change the official decision. We didn’t ask them for that. We have spoken to our lawyers and asked them to ask the court if they could speed it up because of the nature of cricket and so on,” he said. 
Reports are that Blackhawks had argued the legitimacy of allowing Empire’s Damian Lowenfield to bat at number three in the order, after the said player had left the match after batting on the previous day because of work commitments.
Blackhawks argued that, in accordance with the 
laws of the game, Lowenfield was only eligible to bat after five wickets had fallen. Empire were reportedly 77 for three at the time of the dispute.
Blackhawks were ahead on first innings when the incident occurred.

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