Travis Head has spoken about the conversations that took place in the middle after Jonny Bairstow was stumped by Alex Carey and how he reminded Bairstow of a similar act he had committed in the first Test of the series at Edgbaston.
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Jonny Bairstow was controversially stumped by Alex Carey on day five of the second Ashes Test at Lord’s, leading to strong reactions from the English team. They felt that the dismissal went against the Spirit of Cricket.
Ben Stokes said that he would not have wanted to win a game of cricket in that manner. Stuart Broad wrote that he was amazed that none of the Australian players thought of rescinding the appeal, especially in the wake of the new culture they have tried to promote in and around their team after the ball-tampering saga in 2018. Brendon McCullum declared that the English team was unlikely to be having beers anytime soon with the Aussies.
The Australian team has now joined in, Travis Head making a surprising claim about Bairstow on the Willow Talk podcast. Head revealed his interaction with Bairstow just after he was stumped by Carey and was hanging around the crease trying to process what had happened.
When asked by the host on what was being said, Head replied, “Oh, Ben was just wanting to find out if it was called over. And Jonny wasn’t too pleased.”
Head spoke on Bairstow trying to throw the stumps down to affect a stumping while keeping in the first Test match, at Edgbaston, He had reminded Bairstow of that incident after his dismissal at Lord’s: “I sort of reminded Jonny last week I walked out of my crease in Edgbaston at the end of the over. And the ball got whipped in, and I quickly whipped my bat back.
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“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?’ So whether he remembered saying that or not.”
Head also added that Bairstow had tried a similar stumping of Marnus Labuschagne in the first innings of the Lord’s Test itself: “Two days before he also tried to throw Marnus’ stumps down.”
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Head went on to say that acting in the heat of the moment was not the same as reliving it later, while referring to the comments by the England captain and players on how they would have acted differently in the same scenario.
“In the moment and the heat of the battle, things come out and things have played out. I know they’ve questioned it differently if they were in the same situation. But with all the heat out of the air and doing it a couple of hours later and saying its a little bit different in the moment.
“So we’ll never know that. And 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.”
