Travis Head discloses Bairstow's shocking Ashes message to highlight hypocrisy as old 9-year-old video reveals truth

It has been almost 48 hours since England's 43-run loss at the Lord's that saw Australia stand close to major series win early in the contest, but the conversation remains around that contentious dismissal of Jonny Bairstow. England seem to find it difficult to come to terms with it and the topic has gotten so widespread that even the Prime Ministers of the two nations have come out and had their say on the dismissal and the debate on spirit of cricket. However, an old footage of Bairstow himself has gone against the England team as Australia's Travis Head highlighted hypocrisy.

The Aussie batter has disclosed in a recent interaction that Bairstow had threatened to pull off a similar what Alex Carey did at Lord's, during the first Ashes Test. Speaking on LiSTNR’s Willow Talk podcast, Head said that he and the England wicketkeeper was involved in a chat during the opening match of the series last month when Bairstow told him that he would do the exact same thing.

“Jonny wasn’t too pleased,” Head said. “And I sort of reminded Jonny last week I walked out of my crease at the end of an over. I quickly whipped my bat back and questioned Jonny on whether he would take the stumps and he said, ‘Bloody oath I would’, and ran off.”

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Head then recalled that Carey's smart work behind the stumps wasn't a rarest of rare dismissal after all, naming a few other instances where he saw a similar.

“We’d seen (Bairstow) try to do it and I’ve seen it happen a few times,” Head said, referring to a South Australia v NSW Sheffield Shield match. “Remember Tommy Cooper getting done at the SCG. ‘Nevs’ (Peter Nevill) threw the stumps down on him. If you put on the England hat, they’re disappointed. But the Australia (side), to the letter of the law, which was explained with Mitchell Starc’s catch the day before that it would be out...

“I know they’ve questioned it differently if they were in the same situation but with all the heat out of the air, saying that is a little bit different than in the moment. (Stuart Broad’s) comments that the whole of Australia would wake up and Pat wouldn’t be captain … He seems to forget our fans are pretty loyal and pretty happy with the way the Australians are going about things.”

Moments after the big revelation from Head, his words were proven correct when an old video of Bairstow doing the same to Samit Patel in a County game from 2014. The video showed that the batter left the delivery as Bairstow, standing close to the stumps, collected the ball and then waited for the batter to lift his leg, albeit not trying to gain an advantage. Bairstow then whipped off the bails.

“It’s very, very smart from Jonny Bairstow,” the commentator said in the clip. “Samit Patel will trudge off, the weight of the world upon his shoulders as though it’s all a terrible conspiracy, but in fact it’s a lousy bit of cricket by him. Just lifting his foot and Bairstow does the rest. A lot of credit to Jonny Bairstow for realising the moment.”