Play has been suspended at the World Snooker Championship after a Just Stop Oil protestor vandalised a table.
Matches between Robert Milkins and Joe Perry and Mark Allen and Fan Zhengyi were halted on Monday night.
Table one was vandalised by a protestor who climbed on top of the felt and scattered orange powder over the table.
A second protestor was stopped from climbing on top of table two.
Play has been suspended at the Crucible after a protester jumped on the table and covered it in orange powder.@WeAreWST | #WorldSnookerChampionship pic.twitter.com/epqAOsDGD1
— Eurosport (@eurosport) April 17, 2023
Former world champion Stephen Hendry, on commentary duties for the BBC, said: “I have never seen that before at a snooker event. It’s a first.
“It is scary. Wow! You just hope the cloth can be recovered from that. It caught us all by surprise and then this happens.
“For me, straight away as a snooker player I am thinking: ‘Is the table recoverable?’ We don’t know what that is on the table.”
A Just Stop Oil statement on the incident read: “At around 7:20pm, two Just Stop Oil supporters have disrupted the World Snooker Championship at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, interrupting play.
“The pair proceeded to cover the tables in orange powder paint before being removed by security and arrested.
“They are demanding that the Government immediately stop all new UK fossil fuel projects and are calling on UK sporting institutions to step into civil resistance against the Government’s genocidal policies.”
MORE TO FOLLOW.
