England bowler Josh Tongue labelled Jonny Bairstow “a bit of a hero” after the wicketkeeper’s intervention stopped a Just Stop Oil protest causing a lengthy delay to the second Ashes Test.
Bairstow tackled one of two demonstrators from the activist group who broke onto the outfield after only an over’s play on the first morning at Lord’s, preventing the invader from reaching the square with JSO’s trademark orange dye.
Cricket has been braced for such demonstrations all summer, following similar protests at a host of sporting events, including rugby’s Premiership final and snooker’s World Championship.
Players had been briefed on the threat and told not to intervene were protestors to enter the playing field, but any damage to the pitch could have resulted in a significant hold-up and players opted to take matters into their own hands.
Ground staff have prepared back-up wickets at all five Ashes venues this summer as a contingency plan, but even that would take time to ready for match use.
“‘I didn’t see it at first,” Tongue said. “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 at the time of the pitch invasion and, along with England captain Ben Stokes, held up the second protester until stewards were able to intervene.
“Me and Stokesy didn’t really know what to do,” he said. “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.”
