Cricket match abandoned after runaway bull storms the field and charges at players

A cricket match had to be abandoned after a runaway bull stormed the playing field and charged at players.

The North East Premier League fixture at Burnopfield Cricket Club near Newcastle was called off on Saturday evening despite efforts to remove the animal from the ground.

Martin Oswell, director of the Tyneside club, said the young bull, thought to tip the scales at 800kg, escaped from a nearby farm and travelled about a mile to the playing field where it arrived at around 3pm.

He said: ‘We couldn’t get rid of it. There was no chance that the game was going to restart before the cut-off time.

‘At first it was quite novel, it was quite funny – but we never thought it was going to impact on our game being abandoned.’

Mr Oswell added that the bull’s owner drove a cow to the cricket club in an effort to entice the animal off the field but to no avail.

He said: ‘The farmer who owns the bull arrived at the ground and tried at first to sort of cajole it and get it into a pen, but it failed. The bull was very frightened – it was spooked.’

Safety concerns quickly arose as the bull could be seen charging at players and farmers who attempted to recapture it.

The bull, which is believed to have weighed around 800kg, eventually left ‘of its own accord’

Mr Oswell said: ‘Two of the farmers tried to stop the bull and it actually hit one of them.

‘He was okay but I mean the beast probably weighed about 800kg. It was a juvenile bull, incredibly fit, athletic – quite frankly, it was quite dangerous.’

Police were eventually called to the scene before the bull left ‘of its own accord’.

Burnopfield CC had scored 226 runs against opponents Hetton Lyons when the match was interrupted.

‘We’re second top of the North East Premier League, so it was an important game for us,’ Mr Oswell said.

‘And it was a game that I think we had a really good chance of winning. It would have been a really, really good game of cricket.’