Thaindian News

London, June 10 (IANS) England wicketkeeper Matt Prior said he felt “stupid” for smashing a dressing-room window during the Lord’s Test against Sri Lanka but dismissed it as a “freak” incident.

Prior was angry on being run out on the final day of the second Test and returned to the dressing room, where he said a bat slipped out of his hand and resulted in a window in the dressing room being shattered, with a spectator in the members’ area suffering minor cuts from the broken glass.

England moved quickly to explain it was an accident - and the captain, Andrew Strauss, insisted the case was closed. However, the International Cricket Council chose to reprimand Prior.

“Every time I looked up at the pavilion during Sri Lanka’s second innings, I saw this big broken window and I felt stupid more than anything else,” the Guardian quoted Prior as saying in.

“When you make a scene like that, you’re thinking, ‘Oh no, what are people going to say?’ It didn’t look good, obviously, and I’d just been run out, but people were putting two and two together and coming up with five, seven, nine and 10.

“It wasn’t a case of being angry that I’d got out. The situation of the game was to try to score as quickly as possible, so it wasn’t like I was run out on 99. There wasn’t any malice or anger in it at all.

“It’s quite nice to be able to sit here and say, ‘This is what went on.’ It was a complete accident and there was no more or less to it than that.

“It looks awful, terrible: run out, then a smashed window, but it was a freak accident.”

Prior, however, maintained the window had “exploded” when he was returning his bat along with others in the dressing room.

“It was more of a shock for everyone to hear a shatter of glass when you’re not expecting it but thankfully nobody was injured,” he said.

“It’s why I can laugh about it now - a freak accident that unfortunately happened.”