da doce： Andrew Strauss ‘s decision to recall Angelo Mathews after he had been runout at the Wanderers was, according to the England captain, influenced inpart by a similar incident under Paul Collingwood’s leadership last year
Osman Samiuddin in Johannesburg26-Sep-2009
‘Do you mind?’ – Angelo Mathews and Graham Onions get in each other’s way•Getty Images
Andrew Strauss’s decision to recall Angelo Mathews after he had been runout at the Wanderers was, according to the England captain, influenced inpart by a similar incident under Paul Collingwood’s leadership last year.Mathews was run out in the 40th over of Sri Lanka’s innings after pushingGraham Onions to leg and taking off for two. But as he turned for thesecond run, he collided with Onions and stopped as Matt Prior took off the bails.Mathews hung around for a while, unhappy with the decision andgesticulated to no one in particular, as sections of the crowd booed. TheEngland team got into a huddle and after Mathews was more than halfwayback to the pavilion, Strauss spoke to the umpires and called him back, amove applauded immediately by a small crowd.Mathews was dismissed a few balls later in any case, but the incident boreresemblance to when Grant Elliot of New Zealand collided with RyanSidebottom in an ODI at The Oval last year. Collingwood was captain thenand didn’t recall Elliott – though he regretted not doing so – and wassubsequently lambasted in sections of the press.And Strauss admitted that memories of the criticism prompted him make hisdecision tonight. “I didn’t see it because I was watching the ball at thetime,” Strauss said. “I then had a chance to look at the replay and theumpires said: ‘Well, it’s upto you if you want to call him back.’ Myfeelings on it were that it just didn’t look right. I also thought he wasgoing to get back for the two quite comfortably if he hadn’t collided. Iwould certainly say that I don’t think Graham Onions did anything wrong.There was no malice there at all. Other captains would be quite withintheir rights to not call him back. But I just felt…possibly having seenColly castigated for doing it a couple of years ago, it probably wasn’tthe right thing to do.”Collingwood, who was the Man of the Match tonight, said he didn’t get involvedin the decision. “I tried to keep out of it, to be honest. I just left himto make his own decision. But Straussy was straight in there, had a lookat the replay and said: ‘We’ll bring him back’,” he said before adding, injest, “I couldn’t believe it!”Kumar Sangakkara, the Sri Lanka captain, also supported the notion thatOnions’ collision was unintentional. “It was an excellent gesture ofsportsmanship and in the spirit of the game. It’s all a matter ofinterpretation and it depends. It might’ve been an accident but at the endof the day the right thing was done.”