England all-rounder’s 135 not out was not compromised by a turned-down lbw shout that, rather, showed much-touted infallibility of cricket’s technology may be in doubt
Ben Stokes: 135*. His euphoric rampage at Headingley will forever be accompanied by an asterisk. In Wisden it will simply demonstrate that he was not out, having completed a second miracle in six weeks off his own bat. But to a few, particularly in Australia, the asterisk will be an annotation. The Australian newspaper captured the mood of a sour minority with the headline: “Ben Stokes was out, so third Test heroics should not have counted.”
In case you have been at a digital detox retreat for the last day and a half England needed two runs to win when Stokes survived a huge lbw appeal from Nathan Lyon. Australia could not query the decision because they had wasted both reviews – the second, egregiously, in the previous over. With grim inevitability, a TV graphic soon appeared to show that Stokes would have been given out on review.
Written by Rob Smyth
This news first appeared on https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/aug/26/ben-stokes-england-ashes-australia-drs-asterisk under the title “Ben Stokes’s rampage should not be sullied with a judgmental asterisk | Rob Smyth”. Bolchha Nepal is not responsible or affiliated towards the opinion expressed in this news article.
