The Worlds snooker championships re-clothed the table that was vandalized and put it back into play
A snooker game table vandalized by a climate activist Tuesday, a match from the World Championship was reclothed and returned to play in the Crucible Theatre.
On Monday evening, the green baize of Table 1 at the venue, in Sheffield, England turned orange when a protestor interrupted the match by hopping on the table, and then releasing a package of powder.
The match between English players Robert Milkins and Joe Perry was abandoned — it will restart on Tuesday — and the previously pristine cloth needed to be replaced.
No orange powder was seen when Jack Lisowski & Noppon Sengkham played their first round match at the same table on Tuesday morning.
A man wearing a T-shirt bearing the words “Just Stop Oil” carried out the stunt in an attempt to draw attention to fossil fuel projects in Britain.
Just Stop Oil, an activist group posted a video of the incident — adding the caption “NEW OIL AND GAS WILL SNOOKER US” — and called for “UK sporting institutions to step into civil resistance against the government’s genocidal policies.”
A woman jumped into the arena as the man threw orange powder and tried to tie herself onto the middle pocket of another table.
The security took her away. This match between Mark Allen, and Fan Zhengyi resumed 45 mins later.
Allen said it was a “surreal moment.”
“I heard a bang, that I thought it was on the other table, and then I turned round and there was a woman on my table,” said the Northern Irish player, who won the match 10-5. “It could have been a lot worse — you saw what happened on the other table and how much disruption it caused.
“I feel like even talking about it is giving them airtime they don’t deserve because they are just idiots. What did they want to achieve by doing what they did? I am sure there are better ways to get their point across.”
Police said late Monday that two people — a 30-year-old man and a 52-year-old woman — were arrested on suspicion of criminal damage and were in custody.
After 118 arrests at the Grand National horserace on Saturday, it’s the second big sporting event to be disrupted in Britain in the last three days. Some protestors tried to attach themselves on the fences of the racetrack by scaling the perimeter fence.
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