Worldwide, cricket hooligans have hurled a lengthy list of objects onto playing fields: beer cans, bottles, stones, fruit, fire crackers, condoms blown up as balloons, paper darts, abuse, left-over lunch. Occasionally, they threw themselves over the boundary as well. But unless it rained missiles or spectators, the show went on – whether at Eden Gardens, MCG or Sabina Park.

Not anymore, comes the message from Rajkot: one object thrown at a player can end a match. Obviously, paying fans footed the bill for the earlier two interrupted games at Jamshedpur and Nagpur. And what price does cricket pay? More rules to stop rowdies can drive out genuine cricket fans from grounds.

Law enforcers and cricket administrators must tread carefully. Don't compromise on player safety, but also don't torture ticket-paying fans who love going to the ground. Watching cricket on TV, in contrast, is like seeing a beautiful painting one corner at a time.

Applying the same security rules as for a music concert or a football match won't work. Cricket needs spending a day at the ground, and if it's in India, that invariably means sitting on rickety wooden benches, concrete slabs and sometimes under open skies. Apart from Mohali, no state cricket association in India has done much for customer comfort, other than for those in their clubhouse or pavilion. There's a case for a consumer court here.

Adding more security rules to already existing discomfort will only drive away families, women, the elderly and anyone who doesn't appreciate colas and bad coffee to quench thirst all day.

It's already happening. Watching an international match at an Indian ground is getting more unpleasant. You can't carry food packets, drinking water, fruits (unless sliced and carried in a transparent plastic bag), cameras, binoculars, transistors (cricket-watching gear now sacrificed in the anti-terrorism altar), magazines, mobile phones, matchboxes.

Gone are the days when it was possible to settle down long before play started for the day, to enjoy a flask of hot home-made tea and a newspaper in a stadium empty and cool under early morning sunshine, unhurriedly awaiting the players to emerge for their work-out. Families brought huge picnic lunches, the women knitted and friends got together. A bag then didn't mean a concealed bomb.

Now, serpentine queues crawl past metal detectors an hour before play. Agitated at finding themselves still outside the stadium when play starts, spectators hustle the security to skip searching bags and bodies. So folks arriving late can bring in a water bottle or a newspaper to cover a dirty seat – luxuries denied to the early bird.

What happened during this ODI series is nothing new. Only, the official reaction is different, and rightly so. Objects flying around the ground have always been part of match scenery. Idiots in upper tiers simply dump their garbage on the heads of those below. Fellows near ground level duly pass it onto the field. Most of the policemen on duty are invariably too busy watching the match.

Ensuring that security personnel watch the crowd, as they do now in England and South Africa, will go a long way in controlling mischief. Closed-circuit cameras, which Jagmohan Dalmiya wants now, have limited scope in Indian grounds with too many spectators or, as in his home den in Eden Gardens, with no roof for the cheaper-priced stands.

Let the cure fit the disease. There's no official version of what exactly ended play at Rajkot. One newspaper reported that a 12-year-old boy chucked a half-filled water bottle at a West Indian player. Another quoted the local police and cricket administrators blaming West Indies for over-reacting after getting into a no-win situation in the match. They alleged that West Indies refused to continue playing even after they had cleared over 2000 fans in the stand from which the missile originated.

TV cameras in the previous two interrupted matches picked up incriminating evidence. Mineral-water bottles littered the Keenan Stadium, Jamshedpur; Harbhajan Singh aggrievedly held up a chunk of concrete at Nagpur. But TV images from Rajkot only produced a paper dart near the boundary. There was little else to justify hyped impressions of hooligans gone berserk.

An example had been made of Rajkot. Expecting hundred-percent saintly behaviour from a sports crowd might be unrealistic and naïve – just as much as it's unfair to punish the many for the crimes of a few. Now any vandal wanting a cricket match stopped needs just a bottle – or a paper dart. It's bad news for fans.

Raja M is a regular contributor to Wisden.com in India.

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