A TALENTED cricketer has been given a suspended jail sentence for a drunken attack.

Lloyd Brock, of Oxford Road, Kirtlington, punched student and semi-professional rugby player Adam Whiter in the face at a freshers’ week event.

Mr Whiter was knocked unconscious and fractured his jaw in three places.

Brock, 24, who plays for Great and Little Tew CC in Division One of the Cherwell League, was the Oxfordshire Cricket Association’s young player of the year in 2003.

Brock, who has been suspended from his sports teaching course, was sentenced at Luton Crown Court on Friday having earlier admitted inflicting grievous bodily harm.

The court heard the attack took place at 1.30am on September 30 last year at a nightclub in Bedford after Brock saw the victim talking to his girlfriend.

Prosecutor Natalie Carter said Mr Whiter was talking to the woman about being a student and “was behaving totally properly and was not touching her”.

Brock was arrested two days later after he was seen in a different nightclub. He told police he had been drunk and when he saw his girlfriend speaking to a stranger he formed an incorrect view that she was being harassed.

Mr Whiter, who played for Yorkshire side Otley, needed surgery to insert metal plates in his jaw.

Judge Anthony Hughes gave Brock a 50-week prison sentence, suspended for 12 months.

He was also given a year’s supervision with 240 hours’ unpaid work and ordered to pay £8,000 to his victim and adhere to a five-month night-time curfew.