ICC warns against unruly crowd behaviour

Cricket grounds that repeatedly fail to keep their spectators under control could lose their right to stage international matches, the International Cricket Council has warned.

The ICC warning follows Tuesday's (yesterday) dramatic walk off by the Australian team at Trent Bridge after Pakistan supporters exploded fire crackers during the one day match.

Unruly crowd behaviour which led to one fire cracker exploding close to Brett Lee, Australia's deep fine leg, prompted Aussie skipper Steve Waugh to take his team off the ground for 20 minutes until spectator tempers had cooled.

Australian team manager Steve Bernard explained, "A firework landed and exploded close to Brett Lee, and he was worried about the possibility of physical danger.

"Once we had cleared the field, we discussed the situation with the match referee and agreed to go back on. If any more fireworks had been thrown, we would have gone off for the rest of the innings."

The Trent Bridge incident and earlier pitch invasions at Edgbaston and Headingley led ICC Chief Executive Dave Richards to tell India Abroad, "Ultimately, we will have to look at longer term sanctions. Where a ground repeatedly cannot have the spectators under control, we cannot guarantee that it will continue to be approved for international cricket. That's the ultimate sanction.

"That's our right. It would have to be a very drastic situation for that to happen and that's not in the immediate vision.

"But ultimately if the authorities in that particular ground or country are not taking this issue as seriously as one wants it taken, then that's a a sanction that could be applied.

"It's a long time away.But in a different way we've had a couple of grounds where the pitch has been way below standards and they have had to be withdrawn from approval until such time as they can prove the pitch has been restored to international cricket.

"One of them was Kingston in Jamaica and the other one was Indore in India."

In his exclusive interview with India Abroad Richards said he believed spectator standards across the world were generally quite good, although he deplored several recent instances of bad behaviour.

"We have had occasions over the long haul where there have been occasionally instances of bad behaviour going back to the Bay 13 crowd on the Melbourne Cricket Ground where people used to have a drink and get a bit rowdy" he said.

"There have been crowd disruptions at the World Cup semi final curtailed in Calcutta. Its happened in the Caribbean, it isn't something that just restricted to one country. It does come and go.

"On the whole spectator standards are good, but when something breaks down that's big news and, as I said before, its totally unacceptable to our sport."

Richards disclosed that the ICC had given each cricket board a July 31 deadline to come up with a detailed written report on player safety that will be considered by the Executive Board.

"We have asked each of the boards to come back to us with a detailed written report by the 31st of July, so we know exactly what the situation is, what measures have been put into place to guarantee the safety of players and umpires", he explained.

He added that it was difficult to get a common standards approach to player safety because of the vast variety for rules and regulations around the world. For example in some countries the boundary lines are surrounded by high fences, but in England that's against the law.

Some countries, but not all, permit the deployment of dogs around the boundary.

"At the end of the day what we want to see is respecting the right of players to play cricket and put on the show they've been paid to come and see without being distracted by crowd invasions", Richards said.

"I think wherever there are crowd invasions on the ground that is to be deplored. What we need to do is to get the support of all the people who go to cricket to respect the right of the players and umpires to go about playing and umpiring the sport without people running on to the ground and throwing missiles or anything like that."

"There is no space in our sport for people going on to the ground during play."

Mail Cricket Editor