In the age of 9-11 and7-7, cricket watchers have to have their bags and bodies searched before they enter Test and one-day international (ODI) arenas. But the commonest threat to security and safety of cricket matches is from the fans, reports Mark Rowe.
During the investigations into the 7-7 London bombers, police took from Lord’s CCTV footage in case the bombers visited the ground. This is not to suggest that police had evidence that Lord’s was under specific threat. In the jargon of security, a Test venue like any other large sports stadium is an ‘iconic’ target; to a terrorist, an attack would bring not only casualties but worldwide publicity.
Hence during Test and ODIs, contract security staff search bags of supporters as soon as they are through the gates; the grisly reality is that a bomber usually detonates as soon as he is challenged, so a bomber halted at the perimeter would not reach crowds inside. After the search, other security staff wave a metal detector ‘wand’ over your body.
As representatives of their country, touring cricketers are even more ‘iconic’ targets. Staff from risk consultants Olive Group travelled with the England cricket team on the winter 2005-6 tour of Pakistan. Richard Knowlton of Olive Security told an International Sports Security Summit exhibition and conference in London in 2006 that the England cricket tourists had two and a half tons of luggage – or a couple of lorry-loads – that often did not travel with the main party: "It’s a tremendous problem to protect them [bags] from contamination," Richard Knowlton said. In other words, a bomb planted in baggage could be as great a threat as a bomb aimed at players.
Bob Nicholls, a former South African police officer, now a provider of personal security to politicians and business people, besides sports-people, told the same summit of a peculiarity of protecting the sports ‘client’. Precisely when the sportsman is at highest visibility – doing what he is paid to do, perform in front of spectators and cameras – the close protection operatives have limited access. Bob said: "If we are involved in private security for a senior political figure, making a speech; it is quite normal to see security people around them, or at least in the vicinity. Entertainers performing on a stage; once again, it is easy for security people to hide in the wings, able to respond very quickly in the event of something happening. In sporting events, this is very often not the case." Off the field, too, the sportsmen may be their own worst enemies, from a personal safety viewpoint, if they head for dubious night-clubs. As Bob Nicholls put it somewhat euphemistically: "Young people – fit – energetic – virile is a good word to use – a lot of them have a large ego and have taken on the world and won; they consider themselves bullet-proof."
The terror and bomb threats, while rare, are so extreme that they cannot be ignored. More mundane, but regular, is crowd disorder. It is easy to fall into a ‘those were the days’ attitude, whether to do with cricket crowds or society generally, contrasting past politeness with present anti-social behaviour. However, to take England, there has been within living memory a transformation in what is acceptable public behaviour at Test grounds, again, mirroring social trends. Wisden 1955 reports slow scoring in the England-South Africa Trent Bridge Test met by crowd slow-hand-clapping. Contrast that restraint with the restless crowd on the Sunday, May 28, what proved the last day of the 2006 England-Sri Lanka Test at Edgbaston. After lunch, parts of the crowd were doing Mexican waves, while tossing torn-up newspapers and the sponsor’s 4-6 wave-cards; and in one stand batting a beach ball around the air. Mexican waving continued even as Kevin Pietersen took strike in the second innings, after one of the most exciting innings in living memory in the first innings. Does this restlessness, and foul language, add up to disorder? To be fair, not this time: the crowd showed itself to be witty, quick-witted and light-hearted (one chant went, ‘let’s all have a disco’), even knowledgeable about the game. The 90 safety and security stewards who lined the outfield to deter supporters from running onto the field had no trouble. The crowd, in my part of the ground at least, good-naturedly mocked them, chanting ‘steward, steward, give us a wave’ and ‘steward we love you’. A man in a surgeon’s outfit asked a steward who had waved to sign a mini-bat, and when the steward laughingly did so the crowd cheered, and chanted ‘lost his job’.
There is enough evidence however of crowd disorder, notably pitch invasions that stewards are deployed to prevent. In his 2005 autobiography Out of My Comfort Zone, Steve Waugh accused the authorities of living in the dark ages, for letting spectators run onto the field. A crowd rush after a game may look joyous on a TV screen but to anyone in the way it is dangerous like a cattle stampede. After some laughable false starts – the perimeter fencing held up by stewards at the end of one-dayers in England in 2001 – venues are seeking to protect the playing field.
However, left unsolved is the threat to players from missiles. Waugh’s memoir mentions, from that 2001 tour, Michael Bevan ‘picked off by a full can of VB as he stood on the Lord’s balcony’ and a ‘walk-off I ordered at Trent Bridge after Brett Lee’s head was narrowly missed by a rocket firecracker that came from an out of control section of the crowd’. Ground regulations – in small print on your ticket and on the sign you don’t bother to read on the wall – state that among other things bringing fireworks and alcohol into a ground is forbidden. Yet it happens, as it happens at football and other mass venues. Waugh argued that one-day and Test crowds are different, and you can argue there is a gradient of acceptable behaviour, depending partly on how large and anonymous the crowd is. On the village green the few spectators are under peer pressure to show most decorum. There is least pressure to button up at a big one-dayer like a 20-20 game. The articles in Wisden 2006 on the experience of attending a 20-20 showed how English cricket with a capital C is struggling to come to terms with a mass 21st century crowd. Cricket administrators, too, are torn. They want the passing trade, yet are in danger of catering to disorder – a new one on me at a 20-20 game in 2005 was the barrels of Carling lashed to the back of sellers, who would siphon off and sell a pint of lager to you in your seat. Cricket does not want the potential for disorder that comes with the casual, young drinking audience. As in football and other stadia, alcohol at cricket has to be managed, not least by pricing it so high. Lord’s incidentally is the only international ground that you can take your own alcohol into – up to two pints of beer or a 75cl bottle of wine, after the MCC pleaded with the International Cricket Council. Whether the authorities can enforce such a don’t-bring-your-own rule at the 2007 World Cup in the West Indies remains to be seen.
In a cricket ground as elsewhere, crowds can segregate themselves, the most drunken and alarming people near the bars chanting (to quote a Warwickshire ditty) ‘I’d rather be a Bear than a Pear’, and stewards gate-keeping the members’ pavilion. The sober member wanting to sit far from trouble however cannot be sure to avoid a firework. At a Sunday afternoon 20-20 at Leicester in 2005 I saw a firework lying on the outfield.
Like the game’s policy-makers, the media, too, are ambiguous about crowd misbehaviour. TV cameras may encourage spectators to show emotion and wave banners; it makes good TV images, Lord’s again, is different; alone of the English Test grounds, its ground regulations prohibit ‘wearing of fancy dress costumes and over-sized hats’. Uninhibited or boozed-up supporters may go too far and invade the playing field – and 90, or more, stewards cannot safely stand in the way of, let alone stop, hundreds of fit young people if they are bent on storming a field. Media reporters in their enclosed boxes, like those in cricket authority in their corporate hospitality rooms, are physically removed from the cheap seats and do not know first hand what it is like to fear a firework or a thrown bottle – or a crowd invasion hospitalising a steward, as happened after an England-Pakistan one-dayer at Headingley in 2001.
The authorities can say – and they do – that they take reasonable steps to secure grounds. A sniffer dog and human ‘wand’ search of vehicles and people entering Lord’s before a Test or a one-day final can be irritating for a tie-wearing member; so too the security-tagging and guarding of the traditional picnic hampers on the Coronation Garden lawn, so that you need the security guard’s permission to return to your hamper for a bite. One man’s lunch is a security man’s potential bomb that you could be activating.
The major grounds, certainly, have put in the investment for electronic security. Lord’s, for example, has a 90-camera CCTV system. From a control room, event managers at such a Test ground can view spectators by CCTV, respond to incidents, and talk with stewards by radio. The likeliest incidents are low-level disorder; or someone falling, or a drunk, needing first aid. To sum up, when a county cricket club welcomes 4,000 people to a 20-20 game we have to expect the crime, disorder and potential for terrorism that comes with such a cross-section of society.
