A FURIOUS ALASTAIR Cook said he expected the controversial run out of Jos Buttler during the fifth one-day international against Sri Lanka to “spice up” the forthcoming Test series between the teams.
Cook insisted a “line had been crossed” after Sachithra Senanayake ran out Buttler as the non-striker backed up during Sri Lanka’s 3-2 series-clinching win at Edgbaston on Tuesday.
“I’ve never seen it before in a game,” the England captain told a post-match press conference.
“I was pretty disappointed with it to be honest with you. You don’t know what you’d do if you were put in that situation, the heat of the moment, until you are. I’d hope I wouldn’t do it.”
But Sri Lanka captain Angelo Mathews insisted Buttler had been repeatedly warned before Senanayake took the bails off to send Buttler on his way.
This was only the eighth reported instance of a batsman being run out backing up in an international match and the first since South Africa’s Peter Kirsten was dismissed by India’s Kapil Dev in a one-day international at Port Elizabeth in 1992/93.
Yet even though ‘Mankading’ — the term coined after India’s Vinoo Mankad ran out Australia non-striker Bill Brown during the 1947/48 Sydney Test — remains a legitimate dismissal, there are those who regard it as against the ‘spirit of cricket’.
“This is just different,” said Cook. “For some reason it’s different. In my opinion there’s a line and that line probably, I think, was crossed today.”
“If [Buttler] was properly trying to steal a single, I could possibly understand it.”
England and Sri Lanka meet in the first of two Tests at Lord’s next week and Cook added: “Probably, [the run out] will spice it up a bit, there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just important you let your cricket do the talking as well.”
