It’s the sporting story that has made national headlines this week, but Carew Cricket Club’s tactics to break the so-called ‘spirit of cricket’ has led to many labelling the team’s judgement call as unsporting.

The uproar came as Carew grabbed the league title on Saturday after declaring on 18-1, rather than tackle a ‘winner takes all’ battle head-on with rivals Cresselly.

Cresselly went on to win the match by nine wickets, but had to settle for the 20 points awarded for the win without any extra bowling or batting points, meaning that Carew won the Pembroke County Cricket Club division one trophy by a mere point.

Even outspoken TV presenter Piers Morgan has branded the club a ‘spineless, cowardly bunch of pathetic numpties’ in a series of Tweets as the row over their controversial title win escalated.

Carew’s tactics, although within competition rules, may have won them the title, but it is a decision that has won them few friends in the sporting world.

Former England and Glamorgan opening batsman Steve James commented: ‘hope they realise what a mistake they have made’.

Carew are used to making the headlines, but even they wouldn’t have envisaged how their declaration in the final game of the season against Cresselly would have gone viral all around the globe at such a pace.

It took a week for the world to know of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, two hours to learn of JFK’s and around the same time for news to spread globally of Carew declaring in a game that promised so much but delivered so little.

Starting off locally, the story was soon picked up by the national press. It even made headlines in Australia and India.

Carew may have won the title, but they lost a significant amount of friends.

The league was shaping up nicely, Carew were 21 points ahead. A winning draw or a close losing draw would have sufficed. A win would have guaranteed it, but very few had the vision to predict they could lose the game yet still win the title by ensuring Cresselly didn’t pick up enough bonus points to overhaul them.

Whatever you think of Carew’s actions, it was a creative way of ensuring the title was theirs even if they didn’t put up much of a fight.

As one person on Twitter commented: ‘100% brains 0% bottle’.

While the declaration sparked immediate outrage, some people believe it was their right to do given they had led division one for the majority of the season and that Cresselly invited them to bat thus opening the door for them to do what the did.

They acted within the laws of the game if maybe not the spirit.

Cresselly possess a powerful batting line-up and by inviting Carew to post a score they were giving themselves the best chance to win the game by putting Carew under pressure to deliver.

Such is their quality with bat in hand they would have been confident of overhauling anything Carew set. The statistics prove this, they finished the season having scored 405 more runs than their nearest rivals.

Carew didn’t see it that way. They batted for just over two overs, scored 18 runs and on losing their first wicket promptly declared.

By doing so, Cresselly couldn’t claim any bonus points awarded for every two wickets taken and every 30 runs scored until the score reached 150, thus allowing five batting bonus points.

Cresselly then came out to bat knowing they would win the game, but were powerless to win the title. It was an empty, hollow victory in stark contrast to any win over Carew that has gone before.

Soon after and Carew were presented with the trophy amid condemnation of their actions.

Both clubs released statements, with Cresselly believing Carew’s tactics were ‘at odds with their title of champions of the county.’

Carew refused to comment amid the media coverage adding ‘We stand together’.

On Wednesday evening, the Pembroke County Cricket Club Executive Committee met for their annual monthly meeting. Hoping they would just be able to discuss mundane matters at the end of a good season, instead other topics came to light and the game at Carew was on the agenda.

Releasing a statement, they said: “In the county executive monthly meeting at Haverfordwest, the game between Carew and Cresselly was discussed and will be investigated further by the executive committee.”

It’s a slightly ambiguous statement, but one that suggests the kerfuffle over the declaration won’t end yet.

What the two clubs themselves had to say:

Carew statement in full

‘In consequence of the coverage of this matter in some sections of the media, we, as a club, have decided not to comment further. We stand together’.

Cresselly statement in full

‘As a club we prefer not to comment at this time until the county have responded, but here is a statement by the club:

Cresselly CC would like to make a short announcement due to constant requests from various media outlets to comment.

Firstly, at no point did any of our officials or captain say that Cresselly would have done the same thing should the positions have been the other way.

We obviously feel hard done by at not being able to play a proper game to determine the winner of Division One. Having beaten Carew in the league and village cup we felt confident that we could do it. On the toss, our captain elected to field as we felt it was the best way of winning the game with such a tight margin of nine points. Thinking that Carew would want to beat us the right way and show everyone they are indeed the very best, their choice to declare and deliberately lose was at odds with their title of champions of the county.

We are disappointed for our supporters, some who travelled quite a few hours to watch what should have been a top game and also people who took time off work to play and to watch.

Many well known people from the sport have commented and it’s made a lot of online sport sites.

Some people have asked if we think ‘deliberately losing’ is match-fixing and if we wanted to go down that road - but we will leave that up to Pembroke County Cricket Club to decide.

So to sum up we are very disappointed, but we want to move on.

We’ve had a great season, with all teams having some good results. Our 2nd team winning division three, our third team doing well in division five. A rejuvenated youth section and the All Stars programme which has been a great success and ladies cricket is also on the up with the successful softball tournaments

So thanks to all involved for keeping this great club going

It will be interesting to see what happens from here.