CHENNAI: The Spirit of Cricket was broken on Sunday. Just not in the way England thought it was. As the Australian team entered the Lord's Long Room following a raucous end to the morning session, MCC members decided to take out their frustration on several members of the visiting side, including their only Muslim player, Usman Khawaja. Videos of the incident clearly showed Khawaja arguing with members of the Club — some of the poshest seats in all of sport anywhere in the world — after the abuse had rained down.
Abuse for what exactly? Abuse because Australia had been alert to Jonny Bairstow going awol multiple times without knowing the rules of the game, rules MCC themselves had put in place. In a roundabout way, the members then were booing their own laws. The specific law in question is 20.1.2. It states: "The ball shall be considered to be dead when it is clear to the bowler’s end umpire that the fielding side and both batters at the wicket have ceased to regard it as in play.”
After ducking underneath a non-threatening bouncer, Bairstow scratched his mark before leaving the crease to presumably have a chat with Ben Stokes. Cameron Green had finished the over but the sixth ball was very much alive. As soon as Alex Carey received the ball, he under-armed it back towards the stumps and Bairstow, as he had done a few times before, was outside the crease.
And, so, to the notional existence of something called the Spirit of Cricket. In most elite sports, what Carey did would be filed under 'smart', 'quick-thinking' and 'game-awareness'. Inversely, what Bairstow did would have been filed under 'dumb', 'lacking smarts', and 'dozy (the exact word used by Michael Atherton on commentary)'. What Carey did very effectively was basically the equivalent of a quick free-kick or a corner, taking advantage of an opponent who had switched off.
While Australia played the game the way it ought to be played, England took a non-existent moral high ground on the dismissal. Skipper Ben Stokes was not too thrilled. Coach Brendon McCullum (who on two occasions ran-out opponents because they wanted to celebrate milestones before the ball was deemed dead) said they may find it hard to share a beer. Geoffrey Boycott wanted Australia to issue a public apology. The only thing that's been lost in the debate is this. It was a fair dismissal, something enshrined within the game's laws.
As much as you want to argue that Bairstow wasn't trying to pinch a single or standing outside the crease to begin with to negate any seam movement, the argument doesn't hold water. The only person who came out of the whole episode with more credit in the bank was Pat Cummins. When it was put to him that Stokes said he would have withdrawn the appeal, Cummins said 'okay'. Elaborating about the incident to Sky, he added: "I think Carey saw it happen a few balls previously, three or four balls previously, and there's no pause, catch it, straightaway and throw at the stumps. I thought it was totally fair play. That's how the rule is. Some people might disagree. That's how I saw it."
Further, he had picked out Bairstow himself doing it multiple times in the past. "You see Jonny do it all the time. He did it on Day One to Davey Warner. He did it in 2019 to Steve [Smith]. It's a really common thing for keepers to do if they see a batter keep leaving their crease. So Kez [Carey], full credit to him. He saw the opportunity. I think Jonny did it a few balls beforehand."
Coming back to the Spirit of Cricket narrative, a toxic Long Room, usually one of the most phlegmatic of places, was filled with so much abuse MCC was forced to apologise. "I think some of them might lose their memberships over the way they behaved," Cummins said in the post-match press conference... "I think they were just quite aggressive and abusive towards some of our players, which I know the MCC weren't too happy with."
Less than 10 days ago, a landmark Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket (ICEC) report found a lot of wrongs in English cricket, including but not limited to racism, lack of representation, how the sport has failed specific communities and so on.
Hot on the heels of this report, watching members of the Long Room wasn't a good look. And, yes, they were the ones who besmirched the Spirit of Cricket.