Helicopter on pitch grounds day’s play

Colombo, Feb. 21: Much to the shock of players participating in a senior level cricket match, a helicopter carrying an influential former minister landed bang in the playing area and disrupted a whole day’s match in Kandy.

The second day’s play of a crucial inter-school under-19 cricket match between St Sylvester’s College and Kalutara Vidyalaya came to a standstill due to the landing on Saturday.

This is because the Police Ground in Kandy, where the match was to be played, became a temporary aerodrome of a politician, The Sunday Island newspaper reported.

Not a ball could be bowled as a helicopter suddenly landed on the ground at around 8.30 am. It occupied the ground for almost eight hours making play completely impossible, the daily said quoting the informed sources. The newspaper quoted sources as saying that the helicopter had been occupying the playground throughout the day leaving the scheduled match there in total disarray. When contacted, school officials said teams had waited the whole day, all in vain, anticipating the helicopter would take off at any time leaving the ground open for them to start the match.

“We were hoping to start the match no sooner the obstacle (helicopter) was removed,” the newspaper quoted an official. This was in fact not the first time that a cricket match at the Police Ground in Kandy was interrupted due to a similar circumstance, which the teams unfortunately had no control of. A match between a Kandy school and a team from Colombo earlier this season was interrupted in the same fashion when some relatives of a top politician landed their helicopters at the venue putting the game in jeopardy, the report said.

On another occasion, the ground officials had to request participating schools, during a match played between DS Senanayake College, Colombo and St Sylvester’s College, Kandy to finish the second day’s proceedings before 2.00 pm because of another mpending “helicopter disturbance”, the report said.

Helicopter on pitch grounds day’s play

Helicopter on pitch grounds day’s play

source www.deccanchronicle.com