Jonny Bairstow hailed as ‘hero’ after tackling Just Stop Oil protester
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ngland bowler Josh Tongue labelled Jonny Bairstow “a bit of a hero” after the wicketkeeper’s intervention stopped a Just Stop Oil protest inflicting a prolonged delay to the second Ashes Test.
Bairstow tackled one of two demonstrators from the activist group who broke onto the outfield after solely an over’s play on the primary morning at Lord’s, stopping the invader from reaching the sq. with JSO’s trademark orange dye.
Cricket has been braced for such demonstrations all summer season, following comparable protests at a number of sporting occasions, together with rugby’s Premiership closing and snooker’s World Championship.
Players had been briefed on the risk and instructed to not intervene have been protestors to enter the enjoying subject, however any injury to the pitch may have resulted in a major hold-up and gamers opted to take issues into their very own arms.
Ground employees have ready back-up wickets in any respect 5 Ashes venues this summer season as a contingency plan, however even that will take time to prepared for match use.
“‘I didn’t see it at first,” Tongue mentioned. “Jonny doing what he did, who knows, the game could’ve been called off.
“[He’s] a bit of a hero to be fair. If he didn’t stop him, they could’ve got on the pitch and done something to the pitch.”
Australian opener David Warner was batting on the time of the pitch invasion and, together with England captain Ben Stokes, held up the second protester till stewards have been capable of intervene.
Just Stop Oil | The Ashes 2023 Pitch Invasion Protest
“Me and Stokesy didn’t really know what to do,” he mentioned. “We’d been warned beforehand that it might happen and for us we wanted to protect our wicket.
“It’s a touchy situation, you don’t want to be involved in that but we wanted to stop them getting onto the wicket. It was quite confronting because you don’t know what to do in that situation, you usually let those people run their course but because they could potentially damage the wicket we felt like we had to intervene.
“I don’t know what that chalk does to the wicket but it would have been a long delay and we wouldn’t have wanted that.”