Former Australia cricketer Ed Cowan called out England’s ‘hypocrisy’ over their position on the dismissal of Jonny Bairstow in the Ashes’ second test match. On the final day of the second Ashes test, a debate over the fair play of cricket began when Australia’s Alex Carey stumped Bairstow with 10 runs off 22 balls. Leaving Cameron Green’s last ball to the wicket-keeper alone, Bairstow began to run outside the crease thinking the ball was dead. However, an alert Carey realized there was a chance to walk out the batter and hit a aimed hit at the striker’s end to catch Bairstow far short.
Cowan, in a virtual interview with ABC Sports, brought up England’s double-standers for not “unambiguously” appealing to the spirit of the game.
“I think where my beef gets kind of clear and this is sort of fading issues, but it’s all kind of mixed up; is to then unequivocally evoke the spirit of the game as this mythical beast, when you have the morale, you better be squeaky clean yourself,” he added.
Cowan also reminded England head coach Brendon McCullum of the time when he beat Sri Lankan legend Muttiah Muralitharan against the “spirit of the game”, as he went to celebrate his teammate Kumar Sangakkara’s century.
“And so if 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 Murali ran away, when he went to celebrate 100 with Kumar Sangakkara He wondered out of his fold to go congratulate, he wasn’t going to go for a run, that clearly wasn’t going to go for a run,” said Cowan.
“And so there’s trickery and trickery, or Stuart Broad carved it to slip and not run, like where are these faint 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 that’s why we have referees, that’s why we have laws,” he continued.
The 41-year-old defended Alex Carey’s stumping, saying 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, because there was no cheating,” Cowan told ABC Sports.
“Jonny Bairstow just had an absolute brain fart and then it’s almost like we have to go back and take cover and it speaks volumes about how they approach their cricket in general. It lacks discipline and lacks thought. And this was just another example of that cost them the match”, he said.
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