5 strange reasons for which cricket matches have been halted in the past
India were right on course for a dominant victory in the first ODI of the recently concluded series against New Zealand, when the game was stopped for quite an unusual reason. During the 11th over of India's innings bowled by Lockie Ferguson, Shikhar Dhawan complained of discomfort caused by the sun's rays.
The umpires asked the players to walk off the field and play resumed half an hour later. This was the first instance of play being stopped due to excessive sunlight.
However, there have been instances of matches being delayed or paused due to even weirder reasons. Here we look at 5 such reasons:
1. Late delivery of food
During the Bloemfontein Test of the Bangladesh tour of South Africa in 2018, the start of the second session of the first day was delayed by 10 minutes as the delivery of Halal food meant for the touring team had got delayed.
Not just the players, even the Bangladeshi journalists had to wait to get their share.
Later it was confirmed by the officials that the delay was due to wrongly printed menu given to the caterers for the Bangladesh team. As a result, all subsequent sessions were pushed forward by 10 minutes.
2. Burnt toast
During the game between New South Wales and Queensland in the Sheffield Shield Cup 2017-18, the game was halted for about 30 minutes as the fire alarm rang at the Allan Border field in Brisbane.
New South Wales required 18 runs to win when the incident happened. Panic ran through the whole stadium and fire trucks arrived in no time, only to realize that the alarm had been set off due to a burnt piece of toast.
It was Nathan Lyon who was the culprit, overdoing his toast which set off the fire alarms. Eventually, the officials gave permission to go ahead and the game was completed.