India Skipper Virat Kohli fan that entered ground detained by local police

An overenthusiastic fan caused a serious security breach on Sunday when he ran into the ground to congratulate India skipper Virat Kohli on his 32nd ODI century in the third and final One-day International against New Zealand that is underway at the Green Park stadium in Kanpur. This is Kanpur first ODI under lights.

The moment Kohli took a single off Mitchell Santner in the 44th over of the innings, the fan jumped on to the ground and started running towards him with a shirt bearing Kohli’s name. He however stopped near the square-leg umpire.

Stopping the match in the process, the fan kept waving to a full-house crowd till a stadium personnel hauled him off the ground. The fan has been detained by local police as reported by Hindustan Times.

This isn’t the first incident when a fan has jumped security in an international match at the venue. A similar incident had taken place in the past during an IPL match involving Gujarat Lions and Delhi Daredevils.

Heightened security

Interestingly, the security for this match had been heightened after the Pune fiasco. Though that depended more on the pre-match security arrangements, security was expected to be foolproof. The extra vigil here comes after the suspension of Pune curator Pandurang Salgaonkar, who allegedly agreed to tamper the pitch ahead of the second ODI in Pune.

In Kanpur, accreditation had been issued for the game to over 2300 persons. Of them, at least 100 persons have access to the pitch, players’ pavilion, match referee, umpires etc. The management had also instructed the security officials and groundsmen to not give access to anyone into the venue without a valid pass and not to discuss the nature of the pitch with anyone, prior to play. Though these two incidents of security breach are very different from each other, they raise a question regardless.