Brendon McCullum Slammed Australia For Jonny Bairstow’s Controversial Run-Out: A lot has already been said and written about Jonny Bairstow‘s c controversial run-out, that took place during the second Test match of the ongoing Ashes 2023 at the iconic Lord’s Stadium. The controversial dismissal has kickstarted a full-fledged debate over the ‘spirit of cricket’.
The run-out took place in the 52nd over of England’s innings as Bairstow and Ben Stokes sought to rebuild after the dismissal of Ben Duckett. Jonny Bairstow assumed that the ball was dead, and started to walk outside the crease. However, displaying remarkable awareness, keeper Carey seized the opportunity and threw the ball directly at the striker’s end, catching Jonny Bairstow well short of his ground.
The internet is divided into two parts. While many feel that Bairstow’s dismissal was fair and under the laws of the game, on the other hand, there are many who feel that the manner of dismissal broke the spirit of the game.
Meanwhile, England head coach Brendon McCullum has also take a stand against the controversial dismissal. He believes the dismissal of Jonny Bairstow on the final day of the Lord’s Test will serve to galvanize his team.
Brendon McCullum Slammed Australia
McCullum opined that the decision to not withdraw the appeal would have an effect of the Australian team. He said:
“In the end, they made a play, they’ve got to live with that. We would have made a different play but that’s life. In time, we’ll see, but I get the feeling that it might have an effect on them,”
“I don’t know if it’s anger, but our unit is galvanised. There are times as a coach where you’ve got to reduce emotion because it’s going to bubble over and you can make poor decisions, but there’s times when you allow emotion to go because it’s going to galvanise the unit.:
He added:
“From our point of view, we believe that we can still come back in this series, and that’s where our focus has got to be. What I will say is it’s a galvanised unit up there and we saw the fight from the skipper, Broady [Stuart Broad] and the boys at the end there as well, which shows how much this means to the side. We’ll lick our wounds and try to come back and rectify things. That’s what I felt this emotion did for the side. I looked around the group and the guys were a little upset. If that helps us to win those key moments in the next Test, then I’m all for it. 3-2 has a nice ring to it.”
He added: “In the end, Australia won the Test match and fair play to them. It’s just a shame that when you’ve got millions of people all around the world, and you’ve got a full house at Lord’s, and you’ve everyone’s eyeballs on this series, that for the next couple of days probably the most talked about aspect is going to be that [the dismissal] and that’s disappointing,”
It has to be noted that, McCullum himself has found himself at the receiving end of criticism and trolling after his latest statement on relations between the sides didn’t go down well with the fans.He said thaht couldn’t imagine “having a beer” with the Australians anytime soon.
There were many who called out his double standards after a video of him from his playing days went viral on the internet. In the video, McCullum can be seen effecting a rather similar dismissal during his playing career, infamously running out Muttiah Muralitharan when the Sri Lankan was out of his crease.
Talking about the same, McCullum admitted that he regrets that decision. He said:
“We always say that if we are winning and things are going great, you don’t want to get too high, and if we are losing you don’t want to get too low either. We are on a path to where we want to get to and want to stick to that. Because a) it’s fun, and b) I think it gives us our best chance. Albeit we are 2-0 down at the moment, I think it gives us our best chance of winning the series.
“We’ve got to polish up a couple of the areas where the game has sat on a knife-edge and we haven’t been able to grab it. We knew coming into this series it was going to be tight and there was going to be those moments. If we can do that, there’s no reason why we can’t bounce back. Morale is high and we’ve played some good cricket amongst other things as well, and we look forward to the opportunity.”
