McCullum said he was not taking a holier-than-thou approach to Smith, and confirmed this by explaining how he has since regretted running out Sri Lanka’s Muthiah Muralidaran as he left his crease to celebrate when his partner, Kumar Sangakkara, reached a Test century.
New Zealand captain Brendon McCullum is not happy with Australian captain Steve Smith’s decision to appeal to Ben Stokes’ obstructing the field out in the second ODI of the ongoing five-match ODI series at the Lord’s.
McCullum explained his personal experience when he runs out Muttiah Muralitharan as he left his crease to celebrate when his partner Kumar Sangakkara reached a Test century. He predicted Smith, similarly, would regret proceeding with the appeal against Stokes.
“It was disappointing that Smith had a chance to make a statement about the way he wants his side to play the game and chose to go the other way,” McCullum wrote in the Daily Mail.
“Don’t get me wrong: winning is important. But the longer you play this game the more you realise that some things are too valuable to spoil. By not withdrawing the appeal, Smith showed his immaturity. He may live to regret it.”
McCullum doubted any of the current Black Caps players would have appealed for Stokes’ dismissal because he knows their style of playing the game. Even if they think to appeal for a dismissal like this, he would not have supported it.
McCullum said the slow motion video is just a second thought as it was clearly seen that stokes was trying to save him.
“Something would have told us that appealing for obstructing the field in those circumstances wasn’t right,” he said.
“My instant reaction when I saw the dismissal was that Stokes was trying to protect himself. The slow-motion replays become irrelevant because it was a split-second decision by him to stick his glove out.
“The fact that the ball hit him in the meat of the hand doesn’t look good. But if he’s good enough to stop the ball from a few yards away with his head turned, he’s playing a different game to the rest of us!”
McCullum questioned why on-field umpires Kumar Dharmasena and Tim Robinson referred the decision to third umpire Joel Wilson, who ultimately decided Stokes had wilfully stopped the ball. England captain Eoin Morgan said the umpires had told him they felt Stokes was not out,
“But in a sense none of that matters. What is more important is the way cricket is played. And I felt Smith got it wrong,” McCullum said. “As for Australia, they may look back one day and ask themselves whether it was really worth it. I don’t believe it was.”