Organisers of the World Test Championship final are so concerned about Just Stop Oil disrupting the match between India and Australia at The Oval that they have taken the unusual step of preparing a back-up pitch.
Just Stop Oil have made headlines recently for disrupting sporting events with their protests. The Premiership final at Twickenham and the World Snooker Championship are two of the events to have been interrupted in recent months.
Protestors have breached security at those events to throw orange paint powder onto the playing surface – and that represents a concern for the International Cricket Council. The Telegraph reports that the ICC have beefed up their security and asked the ground staff to prepare a second pitch in case the chosen one is damaged.
India take on Australia in the one-off match at The Oval to be crowned winners of the World Test Championship. The match is the first of six Tests in eight weeks for Australia, who will move straight on to face England in the Ashes.
Australia captain Pat Cummins is aware of the heightened security around cricket matches in the UK this summer. “It’s something we got in the security briefing a couple days ago,” he said. “I’ve heard that they’re aware of it and kind of keep an eye out. But that’s as much as we’ve heard.
“So hopefully, it doesn’t happen, obviously. But yeah, I’ve heard there’s a few different events that have been affected.” Cummins is a passionate advocate for action against climate change. The 30-year-old fast bowler has frequently spoken about how the sport needs to fight back against global warming and helped launch the Cricket for Climate initiative last year.
However, he stopped short of backing Just Stop Oil’s campaign, which aims to cause widespread disruption in an effort to keep the debate in the news.
“First of all I have to say I haven’t really followed it at all, so I don’t really know what these protests are about, but my view is always there’s right ways to go about things and potentially not the right way to go about things,” Cummins said. “Whenever anyone’s got any beliefs, you just hope you take the right option.”
While Just Stop Oil are yet to protest at a cricket match this year, they have already impacted the sport. England’s team bus was delayed on its journey to Lord’s for the opening Test of the summer against Ireland last week, while Australia were delayed travelling to The Oval to train on Monday.
Cricket is not the only sport aware of the threat of protestors. Organisers of the FA Cup Final, the Epsom Derby and Rugby League’s Magic Weekend all took extra precautions recently to avoid disruption.
