Australian cricketer Trent Copeland has savaged English captain Ben Stokes for hypocrisy after “digging his own grave” with comments being thrown back in his face after the final Ashes Test.
Australian vice-captain Steve Smith was handed a massive reprieve on the final over before lunch on day five of the fifth Test, with Stokes dropping a catch while celebrating in dramatic scenes at The Oval.
In the 66th over of Australia’s second innings, England spinner Moeen Ali ripped a delivery into Smith’s gloves, with the catch ballooning towards Stokes at leg slip.
The England captain leapt in the air and held onto the one-handed chance, with the hosts appealing for a dismissal — but umpire Joel Wilson was unmoved at the striker’s end.
Stokes was initially reluctant to call for a review, but his teammates begged him to send the decision upstairs.
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The London crowd erupted when footage of the deflection off Smith’s gloves appeared on the big screens, but third umpire Nitin Menon wanted to see replays of Stokes’ catch.
While the Durham all-rounder threw his arms up to appeal, the ball had slipped out of his hands — and Menon subsequently handed down a not out verdict.
“As Stokes looks to celebrate, he drops the catch,” former England bowler Isa Guha said on BBC Test Match Special.
“That’s why he didn’t want to review. He has lost control of the ball there.”
Former Test captain Alastair Cook continued: “The umpires have got it right.
“There’s no question in my mind. Ben Stokes knew it, he put his head and eyes to the ground. I don’t think I’ve heard the crowd be so quiet during a DRS review.”
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But on Tuesday, the sheer hypocrisy of Stokes questioning the decision – when he’d claimed he would always make decisions based on the spirit of the game – was thrown back in his face by Copeland.
“Ben Stokes after the Bairstow thing – quote, ‘if I was the fielding captain, I would have had a real think about the spirit of the game. For Australia, it was the match-winning moment. Would I want to win a game in that matter? The answer for me is no’,” he said on SEN.
“We also had Stuart Broad carry on. We had Piers Morgan run every single bit of coverage in-between Tests, attacking the Australian captain’s character.
“Last night, Steve Smith, Ben Stokes, it was called a Herschelle Gibbs moment. I actually don’t even care about this normally, I’d never bat an eyelid. Ben Stokes clearly drops a catch … he says in his body language and in his face, I dropped that, and I know it. Then, after being asked a couple of times by his teammates – oh, go on, send it upstairs – he chooses to review it.
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“Now look I’m gonna say, I couldn’t care less normally, but if you get on your high horse a month ago and call out the character of the Australian captain, in that very moment, I am sorry, but you chose winning over everything else. You didn’t choose ‘OK, you know what, it’s not how we want to play, I know I dropped it’.
“The only way out of is if he thought he was appealing for LBW; that is the only answer I would accept, because of the moral high ground argument we’ve had ponied out for the last month.
“This is not an attack on Ben Stokes’ character, this is not a whinge about a result … but you dug your own grave in this sense by calling out Australia, and saying winning isn’t everything, and that’s not how we would play it. Well, two Tests later, you had the same equation, you chose winning.”
To rub salt into the wounds, England lost their second unsuccessful review, much to Stokes’ frustration.
“You could tell immediately from his reaction that he knew he’d made an error,” former England captain Nasser Hussain said on Sky Sports.
“It very much reminded me of that Herschelle Gibbs moment in the 1999 World Cup, where he threw it away too early when claiming a catch.”
Stokes recreates uncanny Gibbs drop | 00:49
Law 33.3 states: “The act of making a catch shall start from the time when the ball first comes into contact with a fielder’s person and shall end when a fielder obtains complete control over both the ball and their own movement.”
Smith, who was unbeaten on 39 at the time, survived to lunch alongside teammate Travis Head, with Australia 3-238 in pursuit of the 394-run target for victory.