Ireland captain Porterfield unhappy with England Foakes stumping

FE Team | Published: May 05, 2019 20:42:42

LONDON, May 05 (AFP): Ireland captain William Porterfield has blasted England's Ben Foakes for his delayed stumping of Andrew Balbirnie during England's one-day-international win in Dublin, saying matches could last "15 hours" if every wicket-keeper waited as long to try to effect a dismissal.
Balbirnie was on 29 at the Malahide ground on Friday when he missed an intended sweep off spinner Joe Denly.
Foakes gathered a wide delivery down the legside but, rather than whip the bails off immediately, he waited for Balbirnie to raise his back foot slightly-thereby making the batsman out of his ground-before breaking the stumps.
Third umpire Aleem Dar gave Balbirnie out after studying television replays, despite Porterfield convinced the appeal should have been dismissed as the delay meant the ball was "pretty much dead".
"How long do you wait? We'll be playing 15-hour games if you wait that long," Porterfield said. "You can say it was great wicketkeeping or you can say it's a bit of a grey area of how long he takes.
"The ball was pretty much dead. The batsman wasn't going anywhere or overbalanced. It wasn't like he had fallen over.
"The keeper has waited for three or four seconds, if we do that all day it's going be a pretty long game."
The move divided pundits, with some saying that it went against the spirit of cricket, but one-day international debutant Foakes had a different view.
"It was quite wide down leg, but I got it back to the stumps," he said.