Australia to target Anderson over bar rumpus, says Paine
Wicketkeeper is ‘sure someone will bring it up’ Bairstow: England need to rebuild public’s trust
Australia’s Tim Paine revealed yesterday that James Anderson would be the target of sledging in the third Test over the Ben Duckett drinkthrowing incident.
“I’m sure someone will bring it up at some stage,” Paine, the wicketkeeper, said about Anderson having had a drink poured over his head in a Perth bar. “But what’s happening in their camp off the field has no effect on the way we’re going to go about our cricket.”
Unlikely. Australia are loving the mess England have inflicted upon themselves and any opportunity to needle Anderson, who they see as one of the few remaining threats, will be seized upon.
England’s midnight curfew is back in place, but the management have closed the investigation into the Duckett incident, confirming the Lions player as the only one to be disciplined over what happened.
England desperately need the third Test to start so that attention moves on from off-field behaviour. They tried to do so yesterday when Jonny Bairstow was interviewed at a PR event in another Perth bar.
The wicketkeeper was not allowed to answer specific questions about what happened last Thursday night, when the curfew was temporarily lifted. Before they had gone out that night, the players were warned by Joe Root to behave and not create any more problems. When asked if they had let the captain down, Bairstow agreed.
“I think everyone realises that is something we have done,” he said. “Not just him, but we move on from that now and that is something that has happened and been dealt with and we’ve got a chance as a group of men to go out there and front up [in the third Test]. We need to rebuild the trust we had built over the last few years as a team. That starts on Thursday morning. You rebuild it by winning games of cricket.”
The England and Wales Cricket Board and the team’s management lost trust in the players last month when details emerged of Bairstow’s ‘headbutt’ greeting of Australian batsman Cameron Bancroft. Bairstow later described the incident as “boys being boys”.
They wanted to know why the team’s security staff, who were with the players that night in Perth, had not informed them of what had happened. England have three security officers on this tour, more than usual after the Ben Stokes incident in September. They have now been told to report everything back to management, which is how they became aware of the Duckett incident.
It may leave the players no longer trusting security staff, who they see as chaperones to help them in case of trouble rather than extra eyes and ears for the management.
The security staff cleared them to return to the Avenue bar last week, the venue of the Bairstow incident. It was one of three bars that had been checked and deemed a safe venue. The players’ behaviour that night was not threatening but boisterous, and it was only once members of the public started to become aware of their presence, and the drink was thrown, that security told them it was time to go home.