Club Cricket Conference

Thursday, 28th March 2024

Bird's intervention makes life difficult for umpires

By Charles Randall

28 June 2012

An under-13 cricket match between Scarborough and Bridlington was disrupted recently by a seagull that flew down on to the pitch between innings and took a bail lying on the turf by the stumps.

The Scarborough boys were just taking the field to defend their total when the incident took place. According to the Scarborough Evening News, umpire Barry Rudd chased the seagull around the ground in an attempt to retrieve the bail, but the bird flew off. Another bail was produced, and the match continued, with Bridlington winning.

Over the years there must have been many incidents of dogs disrupting games by stealing the match ball or harrassing fielders, and many dogs have helped games by finding lost balls, but birds must be rare intruders.

In first class cricket John Snow once used seagulls to his advantage at Trent Bridge in the 1976 Test against the West Indies. Needing to slow the match down to achieve a draw, he surreptitiously deposited cake crumbs from his pocket on to the grass at the end of his run-up so that the batsmen continually had to hold up play due to the feeding frenzy movement behind the bowler's arm.

The most famous bird to interrupt a match was the sparrow killed by a ball delivered by Jehangir Khan in the MCC versus Cambridge University fixture of 1936. It subsequently went on display at the Lord's museum, stuffed and mounted on the very ball that killed it. Incidentally the exhibit was shown in The Grand House Sparrow Exhibition at Rotterdam in 2006 alongside a sparrow that was shot for accidentally knocking over 23,000 dominos at a world-record attempt just before the event was to be televised in 11 countries.

A labrador once had a say in the result of the championship game between Surrey and Yorkshire at Guildford in 2002. A sweep by the Yorkshire batsman Richard Blakey bounced off the boundary rope deep into the press box where the ball disturbed a sleeping dog called Bumper. When the ball was eventually returned to the bowler, it was covered in saliva and deep teeth marks.

Umpire Nigel Llong refused to allow Surrey's captain Adam Hollioake to exchange the ball for another of similar age, effectively forcing Surrey to take the new ball that had become due an hour previously. The spin strategy on a slow-turning pitch, led by the outstanding Pakistan off-spinner Saqlain Mushtaq, was abandoned for seam, but Yorkshire unexpectedly collapsed against Ed Giddins and lost the match.