Hey Jo, so no one will stop talking about the seemingly absolutely scandalous scenes at the Ashes this week, but I’m going to be honest with you – I have no idea how cricket works, or even what this ‘crease’ is that everyone seems so riled up about.
What’s actually going on?
Hi Matilda, you’re not alone there. I’ll go back to some cricket basics to start. The controversy is based around a “stumping” which is one way a batter can get out in cricket when the wicketkeeper hits the stumps with the ball while the batter is outside the ground or the crease. The crease is the line on the ground where the batter stands – if they are touching the ground on one side of the line then they’re ‘safe’, if they’re outside the crease they can be stumped. A stumping often happens when a batter has moved out of their crease to play a shot, and misses it. But it can also occur in more dubious circumstances.
Oh OK, so what did England do to give us – Australia – the chance to stump them like we did?
Well it’s all about Jonny Bairstow, who is England’s wicketkeeper. He was batting with his captain, Ben Stokes, up the other end and, to put it simply, Bairstow was just not paying attention. In the two balls before the stumping you can see that Bairstow doesn’t check to see if the ball is still in play and, crucially, he leaves the crease, walking into the middle to chat to Stokes. Australia’s wicketkeeper, Alex Carey, clearly notices this and, after Bairstow ducks the next ball, Carey quickly picks it up and tosses it into the stumps, Bairstow none the wiser.
Oh so Bairstow was a bit off with the fairies, left the crease unoccupied because he thought the play was over and Carey got a sneaky one on him and got him out? But like … why is that a bad thing? Why are people (the Brits) upset?
Yes, at this point it’s important to note that this stumping was given out and is within the rules of the game, nothing illegal about it. But England are salty because they think it was outside the ‘spirit of the game’. They’re arguing that because Bairstow wasn’t attempting to make a run and it was the end of the over, the stumping was in fact too sneaky, too unsporting. If England had been given that stumping opportunity, they jolly well wouldn’t have taken it … allegedly.
Hmmm I sense a plot twist coming. Is this really something the England team would ‘never think of doing’?
No, and they’ve done it before. As soon as England’s players and their coach, Brendon McCullum, tried to take the moral high ground, the internet quickly went to work finding examples of the many times they had done it. Turns out Bairstow actually tried to do it to Australian batter Marnus Labuschagne just two days earlier. And McCullum famously ran out Sri Lanka’s Muttiah Muralitharan as he was congratulating his teammate for making a century. But it’s not just the hypocrisy of England’s reaction. When the Lord’s crowd starting calling Australia cheats, that cut deep, and for good reason.
Ooooof, yeah I guess we have a bit of a rough history in that department. So what has the fallout of all of this been?
It has resulted in an increasingly heated yet tedious back and forth between England’s and Australia’s players, and now prime ministers, too. It also means both teams are going to come out firing at the third Ashes Test at Headingley on Thursday, and Pat Cummins’s men will face an even rowdier crowd than what we saw at Lord’s.
Well, look Jo, I can’t say I was planning on watching that game of cricket, but if Australia’s honour is in doubt and there is the chance to stick it to the poms, then consider me in! I’m now a BIG fan of sneaky stumping.
If this has got you on board Matilda then, as they say, cricket is the winner on the day. Australia go into the next Test on Thursday in a good position with a 2-0 series lead, but maybe this stumping furore will spur England to produce the Bazball domination we were promised.
Wait, what on earth is Bazball?
Oh … where do I start? I’ll let writer Rob Smyth handle this one I think.
