Barbados: Curb drinking at cricket (11 May 1999)

11 May 1999

Barbados: Curb drinking at cricket

The Barbados Nation

New York - As the debate continues on the recent bottle-throwing incident at Kensington Oval, Prime Minister Owen Arthur says cricket authorities must curb the way spectators consume drinks at Kensington Oval.

Arthur, who apologised to the cricketing world for the incident during the Australia-West Indies one-day series, said in New York that Barbados' international image had suffered as a result of what happened.

"It has done no good to our image and right thinking people, I don't think, can support it no matter what the provocation would have been," he said in response to a question at a town meeting in Brooklyn attended by more than 100 Bajans on Saturday.

The Prime Minister said that Barbadians couldn't take comfort in the fact that similar incidents had occurred elsewhere and he urged cricket authorities to take a hard look at the way drinks were sold at Kensington.

"The fact that it happens elsewhere does not give us comfort that it happened in our country," he said. "We regret that it has happened. I can't speak for the cricketing authorities but I would imagine that they would institute such measures to control how people can consume and the utensils they use for the consumption at the games. I would imagine that they would recognise the need for better control of these things."

Similar bottle-throwing incidents at sporting events in Europe and North America, have forced authorities to sell drinks in paper cups and not in bottles.

Australian batsman Mark Waugh, the brother of captain Steve Waugh, said in a weekend interview with a British newspaper that Bajans probably had too much to drink and were out of control when they began throwing bottles during the seventh one-day international between Australia and the West Indies.

But even worse, stated Waugh, the Bajans' behaviour, which forced the authorities to reverse a run-out decision and allow West Indies opener Sherwin Campbell to return to the crease had set a troubling precedent for cricket as a whole.

Source :: The Barbados Nation (https://www.nationnews.com/)