Australian Legend Questions Comment of Ben Stokes On the Dismissal of Jonny Bairstow
Former captain of Australia Ricky Ponting questioned the comment of England's captain Ben Stokes on the dismissal of Jonny Bairstow on Day 5 of the second Test match of the Ashes 2023 series. Many fans have deemed Bairstow's dismissal debatable, and Stokes also went on to question the decision.
But Ponting clarified his stance on this by saying that the only relevant aspect of the entire dismissal was whether the onfield umpire had declared the over complete or not.
Ponting said, "There's no difference. There's none because the ball's still alive until the umpire calls over and the ball is alive, and it doesn't matter if it's the fourth, first, second, or third ball; you still have to ask permission to leave your crease, and if you do that and the fielding captain says, Yes, you can leave your crease, then the ball is deemed to be dead."
The former captain of Australia believes that it was easy for Stokes to make a bold claim about the entire incident as he had a lot of time to think and formulate his answer after the end of the match.
"It's pretty easy for Ben, at the end of the match, to sit down and give that point of view. But he was actually out there as the batting captain of his team. He could have asked there and then, in the heat of the battle, if he was thinking clearly, like he said he was three hours later in post-game."
He further added that, "If he was thinking enough, he would have said that to the umpires: 'You know, was it over? Had you started to move? Is the ball dead?' They were the questions that had to be answered then and not at the end of the game when he said it."