Prior felt 'stupid' after breaking window

Matt Prior has admitted he felt "stupid" for smashing a window in the Lord's dressing room during the final day against Sri Lanka but insisted it was entirely accidental and no malice was involved.

The incident occurred after Prior was run out for 4 and had returned to the dressing room where he said his bat slipped rather than there being any huge outburst of frustration at his dismissal. The glass that fell down into the pavilion below, cutting one female spectator on the ankle, but Prior apologised before taking the field a short while later.

As far as MCC and the ECB were concerned that was the end of the matter, but the ICC reprimanded Prior after he was reported to Javagal Srinath, the match referee, by the umpires. Prior accepted they were just following protocol and his feelings are now more of embarrassment.

"Every time I looked up at the pavilion during Sri Lanka's second innings, I just saw this big broken window and I felt stupid more than anything else," he told the Evening Standard. "When you make a scene like that, you're thinking, 'Oh no, what are people going to say?' It didn't look good, obviously, and I'd just been run out, but people were putting two and two together and coming up with five, seven, nine and 10.

"It wasn't a case of being angry that I'd got out. The situation of the game was to try to score as quickly as possible, so it wasn't like I was run out on 99. It was a complete accident and there was no more or less to it than that. It looks awful, terrible: run out, then a smashed window, but it was a complete freak accident."

Although Prior scored a superb 126 in England's first innings, to help them recover from 22 for 3, it developed into a tricky Test for the wicketkeeper with the home side's wayward bowling giving him a hard job behind the stumps. He conceded 32 byes in the match - 25 of those in the first innings - although many weren't his fault and could have been called wide.

"I'm very proud of my keeping and I didn't feel I was keeping badly, so when you see the byes racking up, there is an element of frustration," he said. "But it was only through wanting to do well for the team and the goals I've set myself but not enough to warrant going into the dressing room and smashing a window."