Cricket Spectator Violence

It should have been a meaningless game of cricket between India and a dispirited England team looking forward to the flight home. Tear gas, brick fights and random beatings were the last thing anyone expected.

The cancellation of yesterday's fifth one-day international match owing to a waterlogged pitch sparked anger from around 200 spectators. A policeman was left unconscious after being floored by a brick, while one spectator was beaten senseless by officers after he was indiscriminately plucked from the fleeing crowd.

Trouble flared after the umpires, in consultation with captains Virender Sehwag, of India, and England's stand-in Andrew Strauss, called the game off shortly after 1pm. Spectators had been lighting bonfires and hurling plastic bottles and stones well before the game was abandoned, and police, who fought back with tear gas, threw back the same stones which had been aimed at them. The England team left in their coach before the worst of the trouble.

This fixture in the north-east of India was scheduled to have been the fifth of a seven-match series, though India had won the series on Thursday after taking an unassailable 4-0 lead.

Crowd trouble at Indian cricket matches is not new. The 1996 World Cup semi-final in Chennai was awarded to Sri Lanka after the home fans grew restless at the prospect of an Indian defeat, and the final few overs of a Test match there against Pakistan three years later had to be played behind closed doors.

Yesterday's scenes were among the worst that any members of the current England set-up will have experienced. "We could see people were getting a bit frustrated with the lack of play, and you could understand that when they have paid to get in," said Strauss. "But we never felt that safety and security would be a problem."