Meteorite strikes county match

The sparse crowd watching a regular county match was treated to an out of the world experience, quite literally, when a 4.5 billion years old meteorite came hurtling towards the ground.

According to a report in The Daily Telegraph, the rock, was a few inches long and up to 4.5 billion years old.

England player Luke Wright was batting with Monty Panesar during the match when the black, five-inch rock came crashing down.

"We were sitting at the boundary edge when all of a sudden, out of a blue sky, we saw this small dark object hurtling towards us. It landed five yards inside the boundary and split into two pieces," the newspaper quoted an eyewitness as saying.

"One piece bounced up and hit me in the chest and the other ended up against the boundary board. It came across at quite a speed -- if it had hit me full on it could have been very interesting," the spectator joked.

Dr Matthew Genge, a meteorite expert at Imperial College, London, said if found true, it would be the first meteorite to strike Britain since 1992.

"If this turns out to be a meteorite it's very exciting and would be the first fall in the UK since 1992. Potentially it contains secrets as to the formation of our solar system," he said.