Australia’s batter, Travis Head, has accused England’s wicketkeeper-batter Jonny Bairstow of attempting to dismiss him in a similar fashion to the controversial stumping incident that sparked heated debates during the fifth day of the second Ashes Test at Lord’s.
Bairstow’s dismissal occurred when England were in a precarious position, requiring 178 runs to win with five wickets down. He ducked underneath a short ball from Cameron Green, marked his crease with his boot, and walked down the pitch towards his partner, Ben Stokes, at the non-striker’s end.
Before Bairstow had fully left his ground, wicketkeeper Alex Carey collected the ball on the bounce and, in one fluid motion, under-armed a throw at the stumps at the striker’s end. The on-field umpires referred the decision to the TV umpire, Marais Erasmus, who ruled Bairstow out, and the dismissal was recorded as stumped.
Bairstow reacted with a glare towards the Australian huddle as he walked off the field and the crowd, who had been relatively subdued during the first four days of the Test, began chanting repeatedly, “Same old Aussies, always cheating.” During the lunch interval, as the Australian players walked through the long room, some MCC members directed boos and abuse towards them.
Now, in an interview with the Willow Talk podcast, Head disclosed that he had almost experienced a similar dismissal at the hands of Bairstow during the first Test at Edgbaston. Head recounted a conversation he had with Bairstow after the Lord’s incident, stating, “I reminded Jonny last week that I walked out of my crease at Edgbaston at the end of the over. The ball was quickly whipped in, and I swiftly got my bat back and asked Jonny if he would have taken the stumps. He said, ‘Bloody oath I would,’ and ran off. So I reminded him that he said he would do the same thing last week. Whether he remembered saying that or not, two days before he also attempted to throw Marnus’ stumps down.”
“So in the moment, in the heat of the battle, things come out and things have played out. I know they have questioned it differently if they were in the same situation, but with all the heat out there, doing it a couple of hours later and saying that is a little bit different than in the moment. We’ll never know that, we move on, and at the end of the day to the letter of the law it was out. That’s their opinion and we’ve got ours,” added Head.
