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It has been more than two years since Alex Carey became Public Enemy No 1 in England. July 2, 2023, to be precise.
That was when Jonny Bairstow ducked under a bouncer from Cameron Green during the second Ashes Test at Lord’s and wandered out of his crease to pat the pitch, assuming the ball was dead. Carey had different ideas. He and the Australian team had noticed Bairstow’s habit of leaving his ground and Carey threw the ball at the wickets. It hit.
Bairstow was out, stumped, and the furore was such that the august membership of the MCC was thrown into tumult and the Long Room became a war zone when the Australian players walked through it.
The Aussies were unapologetic. The decision was germane to England losing the game and, for a while, it was open season on Carey. There was even a false rumour that he had got a haircut in London and walked away without paying. Australia shot that story down fast. Carey hadn’t had a haircut for months, the team said.
The circus continued for a while. Emotions were high. Some MCC members were banned for their behaviour. Carey seemed relatively unaffected. He is a stoical, level kind of cricketer, never too high, never too low. Australia retained the Ashes and Carey got on with his career.
He has matured into a quite exceptional player. If it weren’t for Mitchell Starc, there would be an argument for saying he has been the player of the series so far. His wicket-keeping has been so good it has put extra pressure on the England batsmen and contributed to many of their dismissals.
Earlier this week, he was doing his bit for a sponsor out in North Adelaide, catching cans of beer in his gloves. On Wednesday, at the Adelaide Oval, he moved on to shots, scoring a fine century and shoring up Australia on a day of uncharacteristic carelessness from their top order.
It was an emotional day for him, too. His father, who had been his coach when he was a kid, passed away recently and Carey took off his helmet and pointed to the sky when he reached his 100. He is a South Australian. All his family were here to watch. His wife was in tears in the stand.
For all that, Carey discovered what it felt like to be regarded as a villain by the English again. The Carey who undid England with his gamesmanship at Lord’s did it again at Adelaide when he edged a ball from Josh Tongue to wicketkeeper Jamie Smith when he was on 72 – and then refused to acknowledge he was out.
England reviewed the umpire’s decision to give Carey not out but the RTS (Real-Time Snicko) being used in this series – rather than the more accurate UltraEdge employed in England – appeared to fail to align the audio and visual components of the review, for which the company running it (BBG Sports, of Australia) have apologised.
A spike appeared on Snicko, but it appeared before the ball hit the bat and the TV umpire rejected England’s appeal.
Carey, once more, was unapologetic about what he had done even if it was clearly not within the famed spirit of cricket. Whether the spirit of cricket still exists, or has become a concept so outmoded that it is laughed out of the ground as a fad of the self-righteous, remains to be seen.
‘I thought there was a bit of a feather or some sort of noise when it passed the bat,’ Carey admitted. ‘It looked a bit funny on the replay, didn’t it, with the noise coming early. If I was given out, I think I would have reviewed it – probably not confidently, though. It was a nice sound as it passed the bat, yeah.’
Carey was asked at that point whether he was a ‘walker’, a batsman who will walk back to the pavilion if he knows he has hit the ball, irrespective of whether the umpire raises his finger.
‘Clearly not,’ Carey said. Cue a lot of laughter from the Australian members of the media.
For a dastardly villain, Carey seems like a nice guy but the reality is that his cynical opportunism cost England at least the 34 extra runs he made after his reprieve. His extended stay at the crease also allowed Australia to edge towards par in an innings in which they had been struggling.
Some will say Carey should not be criticised for the way he acted. But remember the way Stuart Broad was vilified in Australia when he refused to walk after edging a ball to slip at Trent Bridge in the 2013 Ashes?
The Aussies were so enraged by that that the local Brisbane newspaper refused to mention his name or print his picture the next time England toured.
What Carey did in Adelaide is no different. His gamesmanship will fly under the radar more this time because it happened on home soil but the consequences of what he did may be just as detrimental to England’s hopes of regaining the Ashes as that ‘stumping’ at Lord’s, on the day the Long Room lost its mind.
