Oxfordshire stars Greg Moon and Les Gillett fired broadsides at bowls bosses after crashing out of the Potters Leisure Resort World Indoor Singles.

Moon, the 2000 English singles champion, tumbled to a 10-3, 9-5 defeat against twice former world champion Andy Thomson, from Beckenham, Kent in the second round of the £121,000 on the Norfolk coast at the weekend.

The Banbury ace had powered to a 10-7, 9-5 victory over Welsh international Will Thomas in the first round, but he needed a victory over Thomson to gain a haul of 20 World Bowls Tour ranking points.

And his second-round defeat meant that he returned home for the second successive year having collected no ranking points in the televised world championship.

This was despite having scored two first-round wins, after despatching England International Greg Harlow in his opener 12 months ago.

Moon said: "I won two games in successive world championships and I've got nothing to show for it.

"I've taken the scalps of two internationals in Greg Harlow last year and Will Thomas this time - but I've ended up no better off than the men whom I have defeated."

Moon also hit out at the new rules imposed on bowls by the World Bowls Tour organisers, as they battle to keep the sport on BBC TV.

The TV contract expires at the end of this championship and, in a bid to jazz up the game, the green at the Hopton-on-Sea arena is now coloured blue.

Instead of matches being played over the best of five sets, with the winner requiring seven shots to take a set, games are now played over only two sets of nine ends each. If the game is level after the two sets, a best of three ends tie-break decides the match.

Moon added: "The world championship is being ruined for the sake of the 20 per cent of the tournament which is being televised. That is surely a travesty.

"Under the previous format it created a certain drama as even if you were trailing 5-0 or 6-0, you still had the chance to come back and win the set.

"Under these new rules we have to play nine ends in each set. To play singles matches over a fixed number of ends is alien to the game."

Moon's outburst followed an attack on the new rules by Oxfordshire's World Indoor pairs champion Les Gillett, who crashed to a 9-4, 7-2 defeat against Derbyshire's Simon Skelton in the first round.

The Chipping Norton player said: "The previous world championship format was a true test. You could come back from two sets down to snatch victory. That was the stuff of dreams."

And he added: "We've also lost the drama of the drive. Whereas previously a player could use the drive as a life-saver to gain a replayed end, now if we fire the jack out of the rink, the jack is placed on a pre-defined spot.

"I fired three times today, forcing the jack out of the rink, but I lost a total of three shots when the jack was placed on the spot, because Simon's woods were nearer the spot."