Former England opener Mark Butcher is confused by the uproar over Jonny Bairstow’s dismissal in the second Ashes Test, saying that “it’s just as plain as day out” and the chatter in cricketing circles is “nonsense”. Australia won the Test by 43 runs to take a 2-0 lead in the five-match series.
Mark Butcher told the Wisden Cricket Weekly podcast –
“For me, it’s just as plain as day out. And pretty much to all of the other professional cricketers I have spoken to, they all say exactly the same thing. Why didn’t he (Bairstow) make sure that he knew where the ball was and what was going on before he left (the crease)?”
Lord’s was the hotbed of controversy on the final day of the second Test when England batter Bairstow ducked a slow bouncer from Australia’s Cameron Green and ventured out of the crease thinking that the ball was already ‘dead’.
However, wicketkeeper Alex Carey played within the rules and broke the stumps, and third umpire Marais Erasmus adjudged it stumped in favour of Australia.
Mark Butcher added –
“I was listening to it on the radio. Nobody had really described what had happened apart from, ‘oh no, oh this, oh dear’,” “So I got on the phone to call my old man (father Alan, also a former cricketer). I said, ‘Just tell me what happened, just walk me through it’. So he walked me through it and I said, ‘So that’s out then, isn’t it?’ And he said, ‘yeah’.”
