United Cricket Board vice-president Robbie Kurz said it was a "sad, sad day" when cricket found itself in court.

Kurz was speaking on Wednesday afternoon after the first day's arguments of Hansie Cronje's challenge to his life ban had been heard in the Pretoria High Court.

Cronje is seeking to have the ban overturned on the grounds that he was not granted a fair hearing by the UCB and that it effectively prevented him from earning a living.

"It's really unpleasant to have cricket in court," said Kurz. "It's not what we wanted at all and we've done our best to prevent it getting this far."

Kurz stressed that Cronje had taken the UCB to court and not the other way around.

"There's been quite a lot of spin-doctoring going on," said Kurz. "It's simply not true that we've tried to prevent Hansie from talking to cricketers who are his friends or playing golf with them or whatever.

"There's also nothing to stop him from writing a column for a newspaper or working as an expert analyst for a television channel. We're not trying to stop him from buying a ticket and going to a cricket match like anyone else.

Kurz did say, however, that the UCB would draw the line at granting Cronje media accreditation or coaching under its auspices.

"Not at the moment, anyway," said Kurz. "We don't believe it would be appropriate to grant him access to our media or VIP areas just yet. But, and he knows this, we've said that if he came back to us three years after his offences were revealed, that would in April 2003, we'd probably reconsider this position."

Kurz also said that while the UCB did not want Cronje to coach under its auspices, "there's nothing to stop him coaching privately and we wouldn't attempt to stop him. I think one of the lawyers referred to him opening the `Hansie Cricket Clean Cricket Academy'. If he started something like that and parents wished to have their children coached by him we wouldn't attempt to interfere.

"We don't want to be in court, but we are trying to protect cricket the way we see best," he said.

Kurz said that the details and extent of the ban had been made clear to Cronje in a letter addressed to him on August 30 and "there was quite a lot of contact between lawyers off and on before that."

The first day of the court was taken up by legal argument as, it is expected, will be the case for the next two days.

© CricInfo