Bradford Mutual Sunday School League fixtures secretary Graham Langton has admitted he made an error in calling off all the fixtures on their opening day last Saturday.

He wrote on the league’s Facebook site: “To all disgruntled cricketers: As one of the guilty three (the others were chairman Nick Spachis and secretary Taj Butt) who made the decision at 9am on Saturday to call off all games, I would like to apologise for making such a bad decision.

“Decisions like these are not taken lightly. The facts were it had rained Friday afternoon, evening and Saturday morning and, looking at the weather report for Saturday, it looked like we were going to have a difficult day.

I went round to Cambing's ground, which at the time was unplayable. Knowing grounds in the league with regards to drainage, there were obvious grounds that if the rain had continued they would have been unfit to play on.

“After talking to the chairman and secretary, we called the games off at 9am. Unfortunately, by 10.30am it was obvious we had made a mistake.

“I then got in my car and visited numerous grounds in the league. I found some definitely not fit to play on at that time and others possibly playable by 2pm-3pm.

“With regards to comments made on this site, I would like to thank those people who accepted why the decision was made and, as far as the ‘1.45pm cricketers’ are concerned (those that don’t do any preparation work, turn up at said time, put no hard work in, like cutting, rolling and preparing the grounds), I have no regrets regarding the decision we made.

“I do have sympathy for all the hard-working people who were trying to get the grounds ready for the first match.

“As usual, whatever decisions are made, someone else can always do a better job.

“If there is anyone willing to try and do the job we do better than us, please step forward.

“If not, please remember we are all of us human and make mistakes. This one will not happen again.”

Langton later confirmed that the affected fixtures would not be rearranged due to difficulty of ground availability.