A cricket club burglar failed to attend court because he’d been ‘sick all night’.

Raymond Starkings, 33, was caught red handed stealing from Stanton Harcourt Cricket Club during their match against Wolvercote on July 24.

The notorious thief nabbed £200 from the cricket pavilion till and wallets from the players’ changing room.

At the time, Stanton Harcourt's captain Ryan Wastie told The Sun that players from both teams chased down the thief and caught him by a barbed wire fence.

He said: “One of the lads from the other team is a bouncer so when he caught up he managed to properly restrain him until police got here.”

The 23-year-old added: “The game was abandoned. It was a huge shame. But stopping this guy seemed like the right thing to do. We couldn’t just let him go.”

Burglar Starkings also admitted breaking into All Saints Church, Marcham, on June 17 and stealing an iPad.

Starkings, of Home Close, Carterton, pleaded guilty at the magistrates’ court to two charges of non-dwelling burglary.

He was due to be sentenced at Oxford Crown Court on Thursday but Judge Nigel Daly was told he had refused to leave his cell at HMP Bullingdon in order to attend court either in person or via the video link.

A prison form summarised by the judge noted that Starkings gave his reason for refusing to attend court as ‘being up all night with a sickness bug’.

It was the second time he refused to leave his cell. He failed to attend a sentencing hearing last month.

Judge Daly adjourned the case to September 23 and said he would proceed in the defendant’s absence if he failed to turn up to the hearing without a good reason.

Last month, the court heard Starkings had been recalled on licence for the second time, having been given almost four years at Oxford Crown Court in 2018 for a string of burglaries.

They included a break-in at Oxford City FC’s Marsh Lane ground in January of that year. He entered the changing rooms, where a group playing football had left their belongings, and stole nine mobile phones and a Macbook Pro as well as some cash. He also stole credit cards, which he went on to use in shops.

He is in breach of a deferred sentence from April 2021 for three other non-dwelling burglaries and two counts of using stolen bank cards.

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