WE HAVE been hit for six by Sussex County Cricket Club, and deservedly so since we bowled them a particularly nasty bouncer.

Last Saturday we claimed an exclusive for our main sports report that players' families had been barred from attending the South Africa versus India World Cup match at Hove because seats were needed for sponsors.

No ball, claimed chief executive Tony Pigott in a letter to me. A viewing area was specifically set aside for players, other club staff and their partners.

Sussex did buy some seats and these, plus 26 free tickets issued by the English Cricket Board, were used as complimentaries for sponsors. But the club did not want to abuse its position by having up to 200 staff and their families taking up seats when the public were unable to buy them because the match was a sell-out months in advance.

Mr Pigott also thinks we should have been more positive in our story in Saturday's paper - it was one of the biggest sporting occasions ever in Sussex.

Yes, I agree, we ought to have been more up-beat on the day about a match watched on TV by 500 million people around the world and should have put less emphasis on the tickets business. But that aside, don't forget the Argus has always been one of the club's strongest supporters. We gave lots of advance publicity to this game, as we have done with other matches, and our coverage of Sussex cricket, professional and local, is unrivalled. After all, the cricketers' bible Wisden singled us out in this year's issue as top scorers when it comes to covering our national summer sport.

APOLOGIES to Valerie Cobb and Mary Martin of Pells CE Primary School which operates on a split site in Lewes. We got in a tangle with their job roles in our story last week about embarrassed Sussex Police saying sorry after the fireworks launch of their new non-emergency phone number went with a bigger bang than expected. The deafening explosions upset some children at the nearby school and the boys in blue went round to make amends.

To put the record straight, Valerie is the school's head teacher and Mary is infant department co-ordinator.

Unfortunately, the blasts that made the Chief Constable jump and brought calls of protest to the new number were not loud enough for one of our reporters. The old number crept into a story this week, but I am assured that any calls to it will still be answered.

WE MAY have put entire populations of woolly bears at risk. A couple of weeks ago we reported a children's playground in Brighton had been closed because of caterpillars of the brown-tail moth. Their tiny hairs can cause a painful rash if touched.

But they are not woolly bears, says Pat Jameson from Peacehaven. Woolly bears are the large, thickly furry black and brown caterpillars of the garden tiger moth. They are completely harmless.

No other caterpillar has such a fine coat. The beastly brown tail creepy crawly is dark brown with dotted lines along each side of the body and two red spots in the centre of the back. So if you see a woolly bear, please leave it to become a flying tiger.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.