Some of the stranger reasons for stoppages of play, including animal invaders, bomb threats and gravy
Steven Lynch23-Jan-2019 • Updated on 09-Feb-2025Flying antsDuring the third T20I between South Africa and India in Centurion in 2024, play had to be stopped for about 30 minutes when flying ants invaded the ground. Batting first, India posted 219 for 6 but when the players came out for the second innings, they were greeted by an uninvited guest: the flying ants. Arshdeep Singh somehow waded through them and bowled the first over but the umpires realised it was not easy. Concerned that the ants may enter the players’ eyes, they decided to halt the game. The big screen at the ground read: “Play suspended due to flying ants interfering with play”. When the ants’ intensity reduced, the umpires had an inspection and gave an all-clear.BeesNot for the first time in a South Africa v Sri Lanka fixture, bees decided to make an appearance. With Sri Lanka tottering at 194 for 8 in a must-win game against a charged South African attack, there was calm, laughter, and a bit of a lie down for 9 and 10, Isuru Udana and Suranga Lakmal in the 48th over.The delay only lasted a few minutes though, the polite Durham bees seeing themselves off unlike the ones in Johannesburg in 2017, that had demanded expert intervention.”Eventually a professional was summoned. One man lived out what must be the dreams of many aspiring beekeepers in South Africa, when he walked to the middle of a packed Wanderers stadium in his trademark baggy whites, nervelessly placed down his plastic box full of honeycomb, and masterfully opened up the lid. Before long he had ensnared his quarry, probably to wild cheers and fans offering to give him their numbers. All up, the bees had spent about 65 minutes in the middle, which many noted, was more time than some Sri Lanka batsmen had managed.”Match officials wait for the sun to move in Napier•Getty ImagesSun strike“In my 15 years as an umpire, I haven’t seen this before. But there’s a first time for everything”, said South African umpire Shaun George to the host broadcaster at Napier’s McLean Park after India’s batsmen walked off the field due to sunlight falling directly into Shikhar Dhawan’s eyes, obscuring his vision. It was one of the rare cases of an international match being delayed due to great weather, but there have been multiple precedents at the ground, most recently a domestic Super Smash game between Canterbury and Central Districts. The setting sun has, in the recent past, rendered the London Stadium unusable for cricket, while the pitch in Manchester’s Old Trafford was reoriented after multiple instances of sun stopping play during County Championship games.
Sun stopped play…love it! #SuperSmash pic.twitter.com/Odjwzgmywp
— Sean Brown (@sean_brown235) January 19, 2019
Burnt toast
With 18 runs for victory, New South Wales had to stop batting for around 30 minutes as a fire alarm sounded at Allan Border Field in Brisbane. Later, it emerged that one of their own players was the cause for their third game of the Shieffield Shield 2017-18 season against Queensland taking a tiny bit longer than they would have imagined. Nathan Lyon, Australia’s most prolific offspinner, had burnt a piece of toast which had prompted fire trucks to arrive at the ground. Eventually, the authorities gave the go-ahead and the win was sealed.Car on the pitch
Delhi’s Ranji game against Uttar Pradesh earlier this month was stopped by a man driving his car onto the pitch, completely ignoring attempts from players and umpires asking him to stop. Despite taking multiple swerves to drive over the pitch, the man claimed that he did not see any security and was merely lost. Thankfully, no harm was done, as the match referee deemed the pitch “playable” after examining potential damage. Incidentally, it was the second major security breach at an Indian cricket ground in a space of two weeks, after a sting operation showing undercover reporters walking on the pitch caused controversy ahead of the second ODI between India and New Zealand.Delayed food delivery
Lunch was delayed by ten minutes at Bloemfontein on the first day of the second Test between Bangladesh and South Africa earlier this year, due to delay in the delivery of food meant for the visiting team. The teams had separate caterers, and it was later found that the ones serving Bangladesh’s food were given a wrongly printed menu, which delayed delivery by an hour and a half. It barely made a difference, as Bangladesh’s bowlers continued to be tonked by South Africa’s top order, conceding 256 runs in the first two sessions, picking up a solitary wicket.Hedgehog
A hedgehog briefly stopped play during Derbyshire’s County Championship match at Gloucester in July 1957. The players unsuccessfully tried to shoo the prickly invader off the pitch, before Derbyshire’s wicketkeeper George Dawkes carefully picked it up and took it off the field. Dawkes was protected by his big gloves on this occasion, but he wasn’t so lucky when, one evening after play at around this time, a lady belaboured him with her umbrella. She had mistaken Dawkes for Derbyshire’s fast bowler Les Jackson (the two players looked rather alike) and wanted to tell him off for hitting one of her side’s batsmen.Snake
An Under-17 representative match in Blacktown, near Sydney, in 2009 was held up for 20 minutes when a deadly red-bellied black snake appeared – “harassing players in the outfield before inspecting the pitch,” according to the local Blacktown Advocate. A few years earlier, also in Australia, a batsman spotted a similarly venomous intruder, and stepped out of his crease to hit it with his bat just as the next ball was bowled. He connected with the snake, and turned round to see if he’d been stumped – only to discover that the wicketkeeper had run away.Burnt gravy
Lancashire’s push for victory over Kent at Old Trafford in June 2007 was held up when the pavilion had to be evacuated after fire alarms went off. Two fire engines raced to the scene, and discovered that smouldering gravy in the kitchens had set the sensors off. Lancashire regrouped and won by eight wickets.Players lay down on the ground when a German flying bomb was expected to land at Lord’s•PA PhotosDoodlebugs
A wartime match at Lord’s, between the Army and the Royal Air Force in July 1944, was stopped when a German doodlebug seemed likely to land on the ground. The players lay on the turf, and spectators took evasive action (they were advised to go under the stands in case of an emergency like this). But the device carried on before landing in Regent’s Park. “The first flying-bomb to menace Lord’s during the progress of a match,” reported an outraged Wisden. One of the batsmen, the Middlesex and England opener Jack Robertson, dusted himself off and celebrated the narrow escape by hitting the next ball for six.Mouse
Kent’s Championship match against Hampshire at Canterbury in August 1957 was briefly interrupted when a mouse ran on to the field. The rodent’s owner followed it on to the ground and scooped it up in his hat. A mouse also stopped play during the 1962 Lord’s Test against Pakistan, risking the ire of cricket’s most famous cat, Peter (the only animal to receive an obituary in Wisden).Eclipse
The organisers of the special Test between India and England in Bombay (now Mumbai) in February 1980, staged to celebrate the golden jubilee of the formation of the Indian cricket board, had to bring forward the scheduled rest day because there was a total eclipse of the sun on what should have been the second day. Ian Botham took 6 for 58 on the first day, and refreshed by his day off he then scored a century and took seven more wickets as England won by ten wickets.Snow
Cricket’s a summer game, right? And June in England is summer time (rumour has it). But on June 2, 1975, no play was possible in Derbyshire’s Championship match against Lancashire in Buxton after a blizzard left an inch of snow on the ground. Almost inevitably, one of the umpires was Dickie Bird, who received an unexpected surprise when play resumed on the third day on what was now a spiteful pitch: Ashley Harvey-Walker asked Dickie to look after his false teeth while he batted (briefly: Derbyshire were skittled twice for 42 and 87). And Bird was also umpiring in 1994 when a snow flurry halted the game at Fenner’s between Cambridge University and Nottinghamshire in April.Cigarette
Surrey’s first-team game against Leeds/Bradford University early in 2007 was held up when a man in a cigarette costume – hired to promote a ban on smoking at The Oval – wandered behind the bowler’s arm. The PA announcer was pressed into action to ask “Would the cigarette please sit down.”Snow stopped play at Buxton on June 2, 1975•ESPNcricinfo LtdPig
A match between Worcestershire and Derbyshire in 1889 (not a first-class one) was briefly stopped when a pig ran across the ground. More recently, the 1982-83 Ashes Test in Sydney was enlivened when someone let a pig loose on the outfield: it had “Botham” painted on one side and “Eddie” on the other, a reference to the supposed porkiness of the England players “Beefy” Botham and Eddie Hemmings.Fried calamari
There was an unscheduled hold-up during a Currie Cup match in Paarl in 1995 when the Test batsman Daryll Cullinan hit the future international fast bowler Roger Telemachus for six. The ball landed in a spectator’s barbecue, among a generous portion of frying squid, and it was ten minutes before the ball was cool enough for the umpires to remove the grease. “Even then,” reported Wisden, “Telemachus was unable to grip the ball and it had to be replaced.”No balls, no bails
The start of play on the third day of the Test between India and England at Delhi in 1981-82 was delayed after the umpires mislaid the key to the cupboard in which the balls were kept. Something similar happened in the Middlesex-Glamorgan Championship match at Lord’s in 2009: the third day’s play started late after the bails went missing. Wisden took up the tale: “To compound matters, the groundsmen were on their mid-morning break, and it was some time before umpire Garratt found them and the missing woodwork.”
