Australia’s Travis Head has accused Jonny Bairstow of hypocrisy after the England wicketkeeper’s controversial stumping during the second Ashes Test at Lord’s.
Tensions flared after Bairstow was dismissed on day five, wandering out of his crease thinking that the over had concluded as Alex Carey threw his stumps down.
While just in law, and upheld by the umpires, the incident proved a flash point, with Australia’s players accosted by MCC members in the long room at the lunch interval and accused of “cheating” by sections of the crowd.
Ben Stokes, England’s captain, suggested afterwards that he would have withdrawn the appeal had he been in that situation.
But Head has now revealed that Bairstow had earlier in the series warned the left-hander that he would have no hesitation taking off the bails after the Australian nearly left himself vulnerable to dismissal in a similar situation at Edgbaston.
Head explained on the Willow Talk podcast: “I sort of reminded Jonny [Bairstow] last week I walked out of my crease at Edgbaston, at the end of the over.
“And the ball got whipped in, and I quickly whipped my bat back and questioned Jonny: would you take the stumps? And he said, ‘Bloody oath I would,’ and ran off.”
“So I sort of reminded him that remember last week when you said you’d do exactly the same thing? Whether he remembered saying that or not, but two days before he also tried 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.”
Travis Head has had his say on the controversial Bairstow incident— (Action Images via Reuters)
Australia’s win at Lord’s followed a narrow victory in Birmingham as Pat Cummins’s side took control of the series.
Only once previously has a team come from 2-0 behind to win the Ashes, with a Don Bradman-inspired Australia overturning England in 1936/37.
Brendon McCullum, England’s coach, is confident that his side can turn things around, though, believing the Bairstow incident might “galvanise” his squad.
“In the end, they made a play, they’ve got to live with that,” McCullum said. “We would have made a different play but that’s life.
“I don’t know if it’s anger, but the unit is galvanised. 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. And 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.”
