UK View: Jonny Bairstow incident has damaged the reputation that Australia rebuilt after sandpapergate

Australia worked hard to rebuild the side’s reputation in the aftermath of the Cape Town cheating scandal. SIMON WILDE argues that work has been undone by the wicket of Jonny Bairstow at Lord’s.

Five years ago, Justin Langer, as the newly appointed head coach of the Australia men’s cricket team, gave a press conference in the Tavern Stand at Lord’s and outlined how he wanted his players to conduct themselves in the aftermath of the “sandpapergate” scandal in South Africa.

The episode had led to the unprecedented sackings and suspensions of the captain and vice-captain and the resignation of various members of the coaching staff, including the man Langer had just replaced, Darren Lehmann. Langer was a passionate batsman for his country and proved a passionate coach until his removal in early 2022 in what was widely regarded as a player putsch. The players believed they had outgrown his slightly sergeant-majorly manner.

What happened on this extraordinarily febrile afternoon at the same venue yesterday (Sunday) suggests these same players are indeed largely their own masters, who do not think they need anyone’s guidance. Not everything the Australians did under Langer quite passed muster when it came to the spirit in which the game was played, but he straightened things out for a while. He grasped from the moment that he took the job the fundamental consequence of what had happened in South Africa – that his team had forfeited the benefit of the doubt when it came to what might be called the borderline aspects of play, where the laws of cricket end and sportsmanship begins.

Langer knew they would rebuild their tattered reputations only if they were seen to be doing the right thing.

Justin Langer memorably referenced the card game UNO while speaking to reporters in London about his side’s cultural reset. Picture: John Walton/PA Images via Getty Images

“At the moment our reputation isn’t great,” he said. “It’s really important for our society that we start building heroes for our kids. That’s how the game will keep thriving. It’s not just about being good cricketers, but good people who play the right way. We’re going to have to keep doing it [the right thing] over and over because people will keep coming back and smacking us down. It takes a long time to build a reputation, but only one act to smash it down …

“We’ve put a big target on our backs because we have said you’ve got to play fair … It’s important that we don’t bend the rules, we play fair. That’s how we’re brought up. We can’t be saying this and let them [the miscreants in South Africa] get away with it. Is it [the suspensions] harsh? Yes. But it’s necessary. We’re all embarrassed.”

Yesterday (Sunday) afternoon the same Tavern Stand – and the Mound Stand to its right and the famous old pavilion to its left – reverberated to the sound of Australia cricketers being mocked for their perceived lack of sportsmanship in claiming the wicket of Jonny Bairstow after he strayed out of his ground 30 minutes before lunch. Bairstow had ducked a bouncer, tapped his back foot in the crease and wandered off down the pitch, as it was the final ball of the over. The wicketkeeper Alex Carey, having noticed Bairstow’s habit of doing this, shied at the stumps and hit. Whether the umpires had called “over” (thereby making the ball “dead“) is a point England thought was unclear and which they thought Pat Cummins, the Australia captain, should have sought to establish. The Australians, it seemed, weren’t interested in finding out.

The backpage of The Daily Star after Australia’s win.

It was a similar theme across the UK.

The Daily Mail called it a disgrace.

The Daily Telegraph went with toxi.

Provided “over” had not been called, Bairstow’s dismissal was technically legitimate, but whether it was “fair” in the Langer definition of the word is another matter. “It takes a long time to build a reputation, but only one act to smash it down … it’s important that we don’t bend the rules, we play fair.”

Jim Maxwell, the veteran Australian radio commentator, speaking on Test Match Special shortly after the incident, suggested that Cummins might have thought about withdrawing the appeal. Mind you, Maxwell was already in Bairstow’s bad books for some unfavourable comments about the Yorkshireman’s weight before the game, so perhaps he was trying to regain ground.

There can never have been a day’s cricket at this famous ground at which spectators made their feelings so vehemently known. Those in the pavilion had not been this excited since they cheered England through the Long Room on the first morning of the 2005 series; now they heckled the Australians on their way back for lunch.

The Australian management requested that MCC “investigate several incidents involving spectators in the members’ area”. It claimed players had been verbally abused and “physically contacted”. Again, when the game finished, the crowd began booing once more as the players returned to the dressing rooms. MCC, which owns Lord’s, has as one of its principal roles the guardianship of the game’s laws and conduct, and is not known for scenes like this. If crowds here are known for anything, it is their indifference to the action on the field, as they concentrate on digesting their canapes and uncorking another bottle of bubbly. But now everyone was engaged. Cummins’s attempts to speak to TV and radio afterwards descended into farce.

The crowd’s feelings were probably already entrenched by Mitchell Starc claiming a boundary catch on Saturday evening when it was clear that he had failed to control the ball and his own movements in completing the catch. The Australians have not only galvanised the crowds but also the England dressing room, with Ben Stokes saying that if he had been the on-field captain at the time of the Bairstow incident he would have “had a deep think about the whole spirit of the game”.

Easy to say, the Aussies might claim, but Jos Buttler, as England’s T20 captain, did think about the consequences during a match against Australia in Perth last winter, when he decided against appealing for obstructing the field against Matthew Wade. He sensed it would not go down well, saying later: “I was asked if I wanted to appeal, and I thought, ‘We’re here for a long time in Australia. It would be a risky one to go for so early in the trip.’ ”

Cummins and co have made their bed. Now they must lie in it.

Originally published as UK View: Jonny Bairstow incident has damaged the reputation that Australia rebuilt after sandpapergate