ES Views Letter of the Day: Crossbow alert was just an overreaction

I was at the Surrey v Middlesex game at the Oval on Thursday, which was coming towards a potentially exciting conclusion on a nice late August afternoon. Nobody in the crowd had any idea that an arrow had been fired from outside the ground onto the playing arena.

While not being privy to the information available to the police who attended, and the Surrey authorities, I found it interesting that the man on the PA system, after telling us to “take cover”, felt the need to assert that “this is not an overreaction”. Shortly after this, we were told that the match was abandoned for the day.

As someone who grew up during the Troubles in Northern Ireland, and who at one stage was responsible for events at a major UK sporting arena, an overreaction is how it felt; I was far from alone in that view.

A precedent has now been set. The door is open to a betting syndicate that doesn’t like the way any sports event is going to have a crazy kid on standby with a crossbow, in the hope of achieving an abandonment and saving themselves a lot of money.
David Stewart

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