Australia’s former cricketer Ed Cowan called out England’s ‘hypocrisy’ over their stand on the dismissal of Jonny Bairstow in the second test match of the Ashes.
On the final day of the second Ashes test, a debate started on the cricketing fair play as Australia’s Alex Carey stumped Bairstow at 10 runs off 22 balls. Bairstow left the final ball of Cameron Green’s over alone to the wicketkeeper and started walking outside the crease assuming the ball was dead. However, an alert Carey realised there was an opportunity to run the batter out and effected a directed hit at the striker’s end to catch Bairstow well short. (Watch the video of McCullum running out Murlitharan here)
Cowan in a virtual interview with ABC Sports raised the double standers of England as they do not “unequivocally” call on the spirit of the game.
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“I guess where my beef becomes a little bit apparent and this is kind of blurring issues but it’s all kind of mixed in together; is to then unequivocally call on the spirit of the game as this mythical beast, when you are going to take the high ground morally, you better be pretty squeaky clean yourself,” he added.
Cowan also reminded England’s head coach Brendon McCullum of the time when he had run out Sri Lankan legend Muttiah Muralitharan against the “spirit of the game”, when he went to celebrate the century of his teammate Kumar Sangakkara.
“And so when Brendon McCullum comes out and says I’m not going to have a beer with them, or the beers are off the table at the end of the series. This is a guy who ran out Murali, when he went to celebrate 100 with Kumar Sangakkara. He wondered out of his crease to go congratulate, he wasn’t going for a run very clearly wasn’t going for a run,” Cowan said.
“And so there’s deceit and trickery, or Stuart broad nicking it to slip and not walk, like where are these blurred lines? So you can’t take both sides of the coin. The spirit of cricket suits you when it suits you. And then it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t. And so that’s why we have umpires, that’s why we have laws,” he further said.
The 41-year-old defended Alex Carey’s stumping and said that it was within the law of the game.
“This was not only within the laws of the game but within the spirit of the game as well, because there was no deceit,” Cowan said to ABC Sports.
“Jonny Bairstow just had an absolute brain fart and then it’s almost like we need to backtrack and cover and it speaks volumes about how they are approaching their cricket more generally. It is lacking discipline and it’s lacking thought. And this was just another example of that cost them the game,” he said.
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