Fine pitch invaders, says Stewart

England captain Alec Stewart has called for fines upto 10,000 pounds for unruly fans, following Sunday's day of chaos at Headingley where a pitch invasion obliged England to concede the game to Pakistan in the NatWest series.

The mass pitch invasion by hundreds of Pakistani fans left steward Stephen Speight with bad rib and spleen injuries, and forced the home side to concede the game -- a first in cricket history.

The chaos spread beyond the stadium's boundaries later, with Pakistanis and local Britishers getting into a fight outside the ground. Police said there were a number of arrests in this connection.

Minutes after the invasion, Stewart told the umpires he was conceding the match. In a statement later, the England captain said, "It was the only thing I could do to guarantee the safety of my players, the umpires and the two Pakistan batsmen.

"In my view we'll have to get tough and impose fines of £5,000 or £10,000 for running on the field. Australian captain Steve Waugh had warned about this at the 1999 World Cup, it came up again at Edgbaston, but nothing is working.

"The problem was that they were coming on here with Pakistan still 15 runs short of victory. I wanted to have a chat with the umpires when they were within four runs of the target, because I wanted to get all my fielders by the gate except for myself as wicketkeeper and the bowler, but they took us by surprise.

"I could see on TV that the steward wasn't moving, so I went back on the ground to see how he was. He opened his eyes when I spoke, but he was not in great shape. It could have been a player, and in any case it doesnt matter because he's a human being trying to do his job.

'We were beaten fairly and squarely, but when other issues like this come into play its a very sad day for cricket."

This is the second such incident inside 10 days, has heightened fears about players safety, leading to calls for improved security at cricket grounds.

The pitch invasion started as Pakistan were four runs short of completing a six-wicket victory but were still four runs short of their target.

As the mainly Pakistani fans swarmed towards the main square to claim wickets and bails as souvenirs, Bradford-based Speight was knocked to the ground.

The 31-year-old steward lay on the pitch until the crowds cleared. Paramedics finally managed to take him off on a stretcher.

An England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) spokesman said the steward had suffered multiple injuries.

"He was knocked to the ground and he was kicked. He has two broken ribs and he has suffered some damage to his spleen and he is being kept in hospital overnight", the spokesman said on Sunday.

As the crowd dispersed, fighting started outside the grounds in the space between two nearby pubs.

Witnesses said about two dozen whites, waiting on the pavements outside the pubs, ran at Pakistani fans when somebody shouted "Charge". Fighting between the two groups, and the shouting of racial abuse by the whites, carried on for 10 minutes before police arrived to break it up.

The landlady of one local pub, Carmel Daly, said there had been no trouble on her premises, but she had been asked by police to stop large groups of youths coming in, following fears that the racist National Front and their supporters would be in town looking for trouble.

Bouncers at other pubs in the area said police had warned them that other racists from the Nazi-worshipping Combat 18 had been stopped in Manchester on their way to the match.

Earlier, a similar pitch invasion at Edgbaston had forced the ECB to increase steward levels, and introduce criminal penalties for any person who wilfully damaged the pitch or took the stumps and bails.

Yorkshire had about 300 stewards for yesterdays event, while 100 policeman were also on duty in anticipation of similar scenes to those at Edgbaston.

Yorkshires chief executive Chris Hassell said, "This is no time for kneejerk reactions and we will be conducting our own enquiry into exactly what happened and whether it could have been avoided.

"I dont think this is specifically a Headingley problem at all; it is a national one which is now affecting cricket.

"As a game we may have to consider whether we want spectators to come on the field at all. We have encouraged them to do so for presentations at the end of big games, but is this the end?

"We may have to think about changing the law to make it a criminal offence for spectators to enter the field of play, as they do in Australia."

Pakistan captain Waqar Younis said "In Asian counties we have huge fences and this sort of thing does not happen. Considering the number of Asian teams visiting England in the near future, you will have to think about that."

ECB director of corporate affairs John Reed said,"After Edgbaston we made some announcements about positive initiatives.

"Clearly we need to be looking at those again, and consider others, to see what we can try to do to prevent this happening again.

"There's no doubt we'll be taking this issue extremely seriously.

"We've got to sit down and have a long hard think about the best way of ensuring player, crowd and umpire safety in the future."