Yorkshire will hold a board meeting this morning to decide whether to appeal against the decision made by an ECB disciplinary panel last night to throw them out of the Twenty20 Cup. As a punishment for playing Azeem Rafiq, an unregistered and ineligible player, in their final group game against Nottinghamshire on June 27, they have been expelled from the competition and ordered to pay costs of £1,000. The potential cost, though, was much greater, having lost the chance to compete in the Champions League in October, which carries total prize-money of £2.5 million.

The points from the game in which Rafiq, the 17-year-old off spinner, made his first-team debut have been awarded to Nottinghamshire, who will play a quarter-final against Durham on a date to be arranged, probably July 20 or 21. Yorkshire beat Nottinghamshire by nine wickets to reach a quarter-final against Durham at the Riverside. That was abandoned amid farcical scenes on Monday, ten minutes before the scheduled start, after Rafiq’s ineligibility had been discovered. Not only had Yorkshire failed to complete the player’s registration fully, an error traced to a temporary cricket secretary working as maternity cover, but Rafiq was also found not to have a British passport, despite moving from Pakistan to Barnsley in 2001.

Yorkshire have until 5pm today to lodge an appeal, which would be heard in Taunton on Monday afternoon. The signs last night were that they are likely to do so.

The ECB’s disciplinary panel, chaired at Old Trafford by Judge Edward Slinger, sat for more than three hours before deciding that there had been no deliberate flouting of the regulations, but it stated that Yorkshire had been aware of doubts about the player’s immigration status early last year, understood to be in relation to a dispute over the lease on the family’s house in Barnsley.

“We are totally disappointed by the decision,” Colin Graves, the Yorkshire chairman, said, and they were not the only ones; Durham had hoped for a bye into the semi-finals. Now they may have to face Nottinghamshire without two key performers, Shaun Pollock and Albie Morkel, both of whom would have played against Yorkshire on Monday.

“There was never going to be a satisfactory outcome, but this is particularly unsatisfactory because we may not be able to field the same side that we would have done for the game against Yorkshire,” David Harker, the Durham chief executive, said last night. “We feel as though we’ve been penalised for someone else’s mistakes.”

At great expense, Durham signed Pollock and Morkel specifically for the Twenty20 Cup. Pollock has been contracted up to finals day on July 26, but has broadcasting commitments that may prevent his participation against Nottinghamshire, while Morkel was due to return to South Africa.