World reacts to the shameful scenes at Cuttack
India’s T20 series loss to South Africa on Monday evening was overshadowed by some extremely distasteful scenes at the Barabati Stadium in Cuttack, which saw the spectators hurl bottles onto the outfield during the visitor's chase, which resulted in the players walking away from the middle.
This display from the crowd has found some very angry reaction from the cricketing world with several former players asking for a ban to the stadium.
- Sunil Gavaskar
“Cuttack should not be given an international for the next couple of years. As a deterrent, the BCCI must also stop the subsidy to the Odisha Cricket Association. Do the crowd throw valuables when the team does well? When the team does badly, the fans have no business to throw rubbish. “
- MS Dhoni
“Frankly, when it comes to the players' safety I don't think there was a very serious threat. But a few people in the stands, they were good (powerful) enough to throw bottles inside the ground, so the umpires thought it was better for the players to go off for a while. The reaction of the crowd... you know we didn't play well and at times you get reactions like these. It is only the first few bottles, after that they start doing it for fun. I still remember we played in Vizag once and we won the game very easily, that time also a lot of bottles were thrown into the ground.”
- Aakash Chopra
- VVS Laxman
- Yuvraj Singh
- Jatin Sapru
- Sanjay Manjerkar
- Nikhil Naz
- Faf du Plessis
“Look it’s not nice to see that. I have played 5-6 years cricket in India and I have never seen that. So you don't want that to be a part of the game. You want to come here and compete and the best team walk away winning. To have that happening, I don't its nice for cricket. It shouldn’t happen. Even the way the game was played towards the end, it lost its intensity. So disappointing in that sense and hopefully, that's the first and the last that we see on this tour.”
- Graeme Smith
- Michael Vaughan
- Krish Srikkanth
- Harsha Bhogle