In direct contrast to an International Cricket Council ruling, the S'African cricket board on Saturday banned its players from carrying commercial sponsors' logos on their bats. The thinking behind the ban, said the national cricket chief Dr Ali Bacher, was to ensure that the logos on the bats did not detract from the attention due to the spon- sors of the matches themselves.

This decision, though patently fair to those companies that shell out huge sums of money to sponsor tournaments, runs counter to a ruling by the ICC which, in July this year, ruled that players could rent out the top nine inches on the front of their bats, and the whole rear surface, to advertisers.

It will be recalled that while various cricketing bodies and commercial interests lobbied with the ICC to bring in the new rule, star international batsmen took to sandpapering their bat surfaces clean - almost as if they were preparing their 'billboards' for exploitation. One visible instance in point was Indian skipper Sachin Tendulkar, who used an unadorned bat throughout the Wills World Cup as he waited for the ICC ruling to get into effect. The moment it did, Tendulkar's bat promptly sported the logo of leading Indian tyre manufacturers MRF.

''We feel a logo on a bat could have a greater impact on a viewer than an event or a team sponsor logo on a shirt. And this we cannot allow, in all fairness,'' said Bacher, managing director of the United Cricket Board of South Africa.

The UCB has faxed its opinion on the issue to the ICC, calling for the apex body to introduce a worldwide ban on the use of logos on cricket bats.

The ICC response is awaited.