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The sandals all-island limited over cricket final is on at the Kaiser Sports Club, Discovery Bay, on Saturday and, as was decided in the semi-finals at Sabina Park on Saturday and at Allan Rae Oval on Sunday, it will be defending champions Kingston CC versus first-time finalists Westmoreland.

After losing a thrilling encounter at Sabina Park, the Jamaica Defence Force on Tuesday lodged a protest against Kingston CC's use of Trinidad and Tobago representative Richard Smith and on Tuesday night, at its monthly meeting, the Jamaica Cricket Board of Control threw it out.

The JDF protest was made on the basis that although Smith is a member of Kingston CC, he is not a citizen of Jamaica and, according to the rules of the Jamaica Cricket Association, he should not have been allowed to play unless he was resident in Jamaica for three months before the game or was attending school in Jamaica.

Rule 18 of the JCA's general rules relative to competitions, the rule which deals with residential qualifications, reads as follows:

``No member of a club, except the University of the West Indies, college, or school, shall be allowed to play in any match in any competition except he has been residing in the island for three months preceeding such match, provided that this rule shall not apply to members of a club absent from the island for a period not exceeding one year and providing also that no disqualification in this rule shall apply to members of clubs who may be citizens of Jamaica.''

Smith was registered by Kingston CC for the competition and the board, through its chief executive officer, and accepted the registration.

In throwing out the protest, the board argued Smith had played in the Senior Cup last year and therefore a precedent had been set, that because there is free movement around CARICOM states, there should be free movement in cricket, and that when the rule was relaxed for the County Championships which was started in 1997 the intention was to relax the residential qualification for all its competitions.

The board also said that by its rules and regulations, it had the power to change the rules for any of its competitions by a simple two-thirds majority once there are no less than nine members present.