Cricket
See also: Sydney Riot of 1879It used to be a common occurrence at the end of cricket Test matches for the crowd to invade the pitch to watch the presentation from the pavilion balcony. In the UK, this tradition ended in 2001 after a steward was injured in a pitch invasion at a one-day match between England and Pakistan. Invading the pitch can now warrant a £1,000 fine and a lifetime ban from the ground. Post-match presentations are now held on the field.
Two One Day International matches at the Bourda ground in Georgetown, Guyana have had their results disrupted by pitch invasions. In 1993, the crowd invaded on the last ball of a match as the West Indies ran a second run to tie the score against Pakistan; then, in 1999, the crowd invaded on the last ball of a match as Australia ran a third run to tie the score against the West Indies. In both cases, the fielding team had been a chance of effecting a run-out to prevent the tying run, had the crowd not invaded; but in both cases, match referee Raman Subba Row declared the match to be tied.
Read more about this topic: Pitch Invasion
Famous quotes containing the word cricket:
“All cries are thin and terse;
The field has droned the summer’s final mass;
A cricket like a dwindled hearse
Crawls from the dry grass.”
—Richard Wilbur (b. 1921)
“The thing that struck me forcefully was the feeling of great age about the place. Standing on that old parade ground, which is now a cricket field, I could feel the dead generations crowding me. Here was the oldest settlement of freedmen in the Western world, no doubt. Men who had thrown off the bands of slavery by their own courage and ingenuity. The courage and daring of the Maroons strike like a purple beam across the history of Jamaica.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)