By Staff Reporters
First published in The Age on May 5, 1978
Riot Test is abandoned
Umpire refuses to stand
KINGSTON (Jamaica), May 4. — The fifth cricket Test between Australia and the West Indies was abandoned as a draw today after umpire Ralph Gosein refused to take the field.
Australian batsman, Graeme Wood leads the way as members of the Australian team and policemen run for shelter from bottles and stones hurled by spectators at Sabina Park.Credit: AP radiogram
Gosein was brought to the ground by police escort an hour after the scheduled start of play.
Australian manager Fred Bennett said Gosein had told him: “We agreed to play a five-day Test. The game has gone for five days. It can’t continue today.”
When Gosein arrived at the ground he went straight into a meeting with his fellow umpire Wesley Malcolm and team officials.
About 75 minutes after play was to have started there was still no indication on whether the game would continue.
A crowd riot last night halted the match with six overs and two balls remaining, when Australia was within one wicket of winning.
Australian captain Bob Simpson taking with a policeman at Sabina Park.Credit: AP radiogram
Earlier today Australian captain Bob Simpson said the match would be completed. Simpson said he and West Indian captain Alvin Kallicharran had agreed to complete the match.
Kallicharran’s decision overrode an intended protest by West Indian manager Bryan Davis about the state of the wicket which was damaged by a spectator during yesterday’s riot.
Australian players told Age reporter Eric Beecher by telephone from Jamaica that the riot was 25 minutes of gunfire, confusion, raining chairs, rocks and bottles.
“The chairs started coming and then the crowd just jumped the wiring and came on to the field,” Simpson said by telephone from the team’s Kingston hotel.
“We stayed out there for 25 minutes, then the police told us it was time to get off. It wasn’t funny.”
Simpson said the players were safely in their dressing grooms before Jamaica’s riot police began firing black cartridges to disperse the mob.
“We’d expected trouble in Jamaica over the Kerry Packer business,” he said.
“He visited here recently and the local papers have published stories about the feeling people here had because the Packer players were dropped from the West Indies team.”
Simpson said the crowd’s anger erupted into violence when West Indian tail-ender Vanburn Holder was given out caught behind off leg spinner Jim Higgs, with six overs to play.
“The crowd were expecting the West Indies to get out if it with a draw,” Simpson said.
“Then Vanny was given out, and he lingered on at the crease, the crowd went off out of the blue”.
The first bottles were thrown as the Australian players were congratulating Higgs on his third wicket of the innings, and the No. 11 batsman Raphick Jumadeen was walking to the wicket.
After a meeting between team officials, security officers and the president of the Jamaican Cricket Board of Control, Mr Allan Rae, it was decided to call off play for the day and restart the match this morning when tempers had cooled off.
