Community leaders say more than £100,000 and six years of hard work have gone to waste after plans for a flagship cricket ground were scrapped.

Bradford Council, which has set up a steering group to run the board of regeneration company Regen 2000, has pulled the plug on the £3 million Gilpin Street Development Project.

But members of the Karmand Street management committee, say they have worked tirelessly on the project.

They are enraged at the decision and have arranged a public meeting at the community centre on Sunday, to hold the decision-makers to task.

Karmand Centre chairman, Sikander Mahmood, said: "We will fight this all the way and it all begins on Sunday."

The Gilpin Street project was one of the major schemes proposed by Regen 2000 when it was formed in 2000 to spend £28m of single regeneration budget cash up to 2007.

Mr Mahmood added: "The community is outraged and this meeting has been demanded.

"People are coming into the centre and ringing in, especially youngsters, because they have been involved from day one.

"The local community has a right to know these answers to important questions.

"And why, when funding is sought from sources on their behalf all the deprivation indicators are used, but once funding is secured are they once again ignored and little investment takes place in the neglected area?"

Sport England had committed £200,000 subject to Regen 2000's approval of the bid.

Bradford Moor councillor Riaz Ahmed said that the issues surrounding the matter needed to be brought to the public's attention.

He said: "I feel very sad and aggrieved because it is a wonderful scheme.

"We were going to get the youngsters off the streets and it was going to raise the profile of the area."

A Council spokesman said the Gilpin Street project had been rejected because it did not meet the criteria required to secure funding.

He said: "A decision not to progress the Gilpin Street cricket pitch scheme within the overall Regen 2000 delivery plan was taken by the Council primarily due to the project providing a lack of jobs and other economic outputs."

And he added: "A number of other matters also need to be resolved by the project to make sure it could be delivered within the timescales of the Single Regeneration Budget programme.

"Yorkshire Forward, as funders of the Regen 2000 programme, made it clear that the project was unlikely to secure SRB funding due to the lack of jobs created and economic outputs.

"However, Bradford Council is prepared to assist in exploring different funding options for the project other than the SRB."

The public meeting will take place at the Karmand Community Centre, on Sunday at 2pm.