India’s Ravichandran Ashwin has backed Australia’s Alex Carey after his unusual dismissal of England’s Jonny Bairstow during the fifth day of the second Ashes Test at the Lord’s Sunday.
Believing that the ball was dead, Bairstow started walking towards the other end of the crease, and the wicketkeeper used the moment to shatter the stumps, much to the English cricketer’s surprise.
In a setback to the English team, the third umpire announced that Bairstow was out.
England skipper Ben Stokes had said that he would have withdrawn the appeal if the same had happened with an Australian player.
Speaking to BBC’s Test Match Special, Stokes had said: “When is it justified that the umpires have called over?
“Is the on-field umpires making movement, is that signifying over? I’m not sure.”
The cricketer had said that Bairstow was “in his crease then out of his crease”, adding that he wasn’t objecting to the dismissal because “it is out”.
“If the shoe was on the other foot I would have put more pressure on the umpires and asked whether they had called over and had a deep think about the whole spirit of the game and would I want to do something like that. For Australia, it was a match-winning moment. Would I want to win a game in that manner? The answer for me is no.”
When prompted to comment if he would’ve withdrawn the appeal for a run-out in a similar scenario, Stokes said: “Yes”.
In response to the event, Ashwin said that the game smartness of the player must be appreciated instead of criticisng him.
“We must get one fact loud and clear. ‘The keeper would never have a dip at the stumps from that far out in a test match unless he or his team have noticed a pattern of the batter leaving his crease after leaving a ball like Bairstow did’,” he said.
“We must applaud the game smarts of the individual rather than skewing it towards unfair play or spirit of the game.”
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