Brendon McCullum says Australia will have to “live with” their controversial dismissal of Jonny Bairstow and warned they will meet a “galvanised” England at Headingley as a result.
Bairstow was out stumped by Alex Carey during a dramatic final day of the Second Test at Lord’s, the Australian ‘keeper taking a shy at the stumps as his English counterpart wandered out of his ground wrongly assuming the ball had been called dead.
Australia were booed off by large sections of the Lord’s crowd and then confronted by MCC members in the Long Room as they left the field for lunch, with England captain Ben Stokes claiming afterwards that he would have withdrawn the appeal were the shoe on the other foot.
Asked whether the incident would affect the spirit between the two teams for the rest of the series, McCullum said: “I imagine it will affect it, I think it has to.
“In the end, they made a play, they’ve got to live with that, we would have made a different play but that’s life.”
Australia went on to win the game by 43 runs despite an epic innings of 155 by Stokes, meaning England go to Leeds 2-0 down in the series.
Only one side - Donald Bradman’s Australia of 1936/37 - have managed to come back from such a deficit to win 3-2, but McCullum believes England can use the frustration with Sunday’s events to sharpen their focus.
“I don’t know if it’s anger, but the unit is galvanised,” he added. “There are times as a coach where you’ve got to reduce emotion because it’s going to bubble over and you can make poor decisions, there’s times when you allow emotion to go because it’s going to galvanise the unit.
“That’s what I felt this emotion did for the side. I looked around the group and the guys were a little upset. If that helps us to win those key moments in the next Test, then I’m all for it.”
