Australian keeper Matthew Wade says he wouldn’t have protested if he was given out for his controversial run-in with English fast bowler Mark Wood and conceded it “wasn’t a good look”.
Wade was pilloried in the aftermath of the clash during the opening T20 made against England in Perth last week after video showed him putting his arm out to prevent the bowler from effecting a catch or a run-out after he skied a ball in the air.
The 34-year-old, who is preparing to be part of Australia’s T20 World Cup defence, initially denied he’d done anything wrong when asked by teammates following the game, adamant he hadn’t done it consciously.
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But upon seeing the replays, Wade conceded he’d done the wrong thing.
“That looked horrible when I saw it after the game,” Wade told cricket.com.au‘s The Unplayable Podcast
”It was one of those things that just happened so fast.
“I think (teammate) Kane Richardson said to me when I got off the ground, ‘You pushed him, basically’. I was like, ’No, I didn’t’. And then I saw the replay and I was like, ’Well, yeah, I did’.
“At first I didn’t know if I hit it. It hit me in the head hard, it rung my bell a little bit, (I) went to run down the wicket, Davey (Warner) sent me back, I turned and saw point running in.
“Then I wasn’t sure if I was going to get run out or where the actual ball was. It all just happened literally like that. And then next minute, I was on the ground, looked up and the ball was like coming down.
“So yeah, it didn’t look great.”
No-one from the English team appealed despite agreement from most pundits Wade would have been given out once the third umpire saw the replays.
No Australian has ever been out obstructing the field and just 11 batters have gone out that way in the history of men‘s international cricket, including English star Ben Stokes, in a one-day clash in 2015, in which Wade was keeping.
In line with that, Wade said he would not have protested had he been given out.
“If I had a conscious thought of doing it, then I‘d be regrettable for doing it,” he said.
“But at the time, there’s just so much happening and getting hit in the head with the bloke bowing 150ks at you – things go in fast forward. It was chaos out there.
“If they had appealed and I saw it on the replay, so be it, I would have walked off the ground, there’s not much I could do about it.”
