Cape Town — Proteas white-ball coach Rob Walter will not be instructing his captains Temba Bavuma and Aiden Markram to withdraw an appeal if the wicket-keeper threw down the stumps in an attempt to dismiss a batsman at the striker’s end.
A global furore broke out on the fifth and final day of the second Ashes’ Test at Lord’s this past Sunday when Australian wicket-keeper Alex Carey gathered the ball and in one fluid motion under-armed a direct throw at the stumps after noticing England’s Jonny Bairstow had left his crease.
Bairstow had evaded a bouncer from Cameron Green and simply touched the crease with his boot before moving towards his batting partner Ben Stokes in the middle of the pitch.
Much to Bairstow and England’s surprise, the umpires referred the decision to South African third umpire Marais Erasmus, who upheld the Australian team’s appeal. This set off an emotional passage of play with an unusually raucous Lord’s crowd jeering the Australian team with chants of “Same old Aussies, always cheating.”
The Australian team were also abused by the MCC Members in the Lord’s Long Room as they made their way back to the dressing room at the tea interval.
England captain Stokes agreed with his Australian counterpart Pat Cummins that Bairstow was rightfully adjudged to be out under the laws of the game, but that the ‘Spirit of Cricket’ was brought into disrepute and that he would have considered withdrawing the appeal.
Walter, however, cannot understand what all the fuss is about and believed Bairstow’s dismissal was part and parcel of the game.
“No. Definitely not!” Walter responded to whether he would withdraw an appeal. “I would be instructing my batters to keep their feet behind the line.”
The 47-year-old believes the incident has only been magnified due to the high-profile nature of the Ashes and the delicate state of the second Test. England went on to lose the Lord’s Test despite a heroic Stokes innings and now trail Australia 2-0 after also having been defeated in the opening Test at Edgbaston the previous week.
“To be honest, I don’t see why it’s a huge issue. Perhaps it’s a critical moment in the game, he (Bairstow) is a key wicket, and then he gets out in a manner which doesn’t happen very often,” Walter told Sport.
“There are a lot of batters who go out and garden after every ball, but they all check to see if the ball is dead. And then they go and do what they need to do.
“I’ve watched keepers try to get batters out like that throughout my whole coaching career, so it’s not something new I guess when it happens. But now because it’s the Ashes, it becomes a thing. I mean, Bairstow, himself, had tried to run someone out like that.
“It’s the batters’ responsibility to turn around and acknowledge with the keeper that the ball is dead.”
The third Ashes Test starts on Thursday at Headingley and is expected to be another fiercely-contested encounter.
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