Australia batter Travis Head has claimed Jonny Bairstow tried to dismiss him in a manner similar to the hotly-debated stumping that ignited the fifth day of the second Ashes Test at Lord's.
Bairstow's dismissal occurred when England were five down and needed a further 178 runs to win: he ducked underneath a short ball from Cameron Green, scratched the crease with his boot and walked down the pitch towards his partner Ben Stokes at the non-striker's end. Before Bairstow had begun to leave his ground, wicketkeeper Alex Carey had gathered the ball on the bounce and, in one motion, under-armed a throw at stumps at the striker's end. The on-field umpires referred the decision to TV umpire Marais Erasmus who gave the batter out - and the dismissal was recorded as stumped. Bairstow glared at the Australian huddle as he walked off and boos rang out around Lord's. The crowd - who were largely subdued throughout the first four days of this Test - then chanted repeatedly: "Same old Aussies, always cheating." And as the Australian players walked through the long room at the lunch interval, they were booed and abused by some MCC members.
Speaking to the Willow Talk podcast, however, Head revealed he had nearly been on the receiving end of such a dismissal at Baristow's hands during the first Test at Edgbaston.
"I sort of reminded Jonny last week I walked out of my crease at Edgbaston, at the end of the over," Head said of the conversation he had with Bairstow after the Lord's flashpoint. "And the ball got whipped in, and I quickly whipped my bat back 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? Whether he remembered saying that or not, but two days before he also tried to throw Marnus' stumps down.
"So in the moment, in the heat of the battle, things come out and things have played out. I know they have questioned it differently if they were in the same situation, but with all the heat out there, doing it a couple of hours later and saying that is a little bit different than in the moment. We'll never know that, 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."
Australia went on to win the Lord's Test by 43 runs and took a 2-0 lead in the Ashes, but the furore over Bairstow's dismissal has only snowballed as the series moves to Headingley on Thursday. While Australia's captain Pat Cummins defended his decision to appeal for the wicket, his England counterpart Ben Stokes said he wouldn't want to win that way. England's coach Brendon McCullum said the teams wouldn't be sharing a beer any time soon, and that the nature of the dismissal would galvanise England for the rest of the series. The Prime Ministers of both countries - Rishi Sunak and Anthony Albanese - have also got involved, taking their respective team's sides.