A COUNTY cricketer who stabbed a man after they met to settle a debt has been spared a jail term after producing a character witness from a former test captain.

Luke De Souza, who plays for Potterne and Wiltshire, was given an 18-month jail sentence suspended for two years with 200 hours of unpaid work, 20 days of rehabilitation activity requirement and £2,000 compensation after he plunged a lock knife into the thigh of the other man when they argued in Monday Market Street.

Both men said they were meeting over a small loan of between £60 and £80 but Judge Robert Pawson, sitting at Swindon Crown Court, said he was suspicious as to the truth of their stories.

But after the 25-year-old batsman produced a raft of references, including one from family friend Mushtaq Mohammad, a former Pakistan skipper, he spared him an immediate jail term.

Tim Hills, prosecuting, said in the days before the stabbing, on Sunday, February 5, the men had bumped into each other in Devizes.

The victim's bank card wasn't working in a cash machine so he borrowed some money from the defendant, who he had known for about a week.

They arranged to meet near Sainsbury's at lunchtime and the man had £60 to give to De Souza.

But Mr Hills told the court when something was said by the defendant the 6ft 4ins victim grabbed him by the clothes and pushed him up against a wall and was then thrown to the ground.

The defendant later pulled out a lock knife and sank it into the victim's left thigh.

As a result of the injury the victim was taken to the Great Western Hospital in Swindon and has undergone two operations on the wound.

He has been told that it could take up to two years for him to recover and the pain he still has makes it impossible to work as a plasterer.

De Souza, of Heathcote, Warwick, pleaded guilty to unlawful wounding.

Archangelo Power, defending, said that his client had initially been acting in self defence but went too far.

He said the knife De Souza used was one he had for work opening boxes in his job as a sound engineer.

The character references spoke of a different sort of person, he said, adding DeSouza's girlfriend was expecting their first child in January.

Passing sentence the judge said: "You, on February 5, arranged to meet the victim in circumstances which I entirely agree with the author of the pre-sentence report arouses all kinds of suspicions.

"The suggestion that you met up to settle a debt of £60 to £80 because he couldn't get money out of a cash machine, and you took a knife with you, would set off an antenna, well, they would arouse suspicion. But you entered a basis of plea which was accepted by The Crown."