Bedingham on handled-ball near miss: 'I panicked big time'

South Africa's David Bedingham admitted he had "panicked big time" during a handled-the-ball incident on the second afternoon of the World Test Championship final at Lord's, one that briefly threatened to thrust Australia's wicketkeeper Alex Carey into another spirit of cricket rumpus.

Two years on from his contentious stumping of Jonny Bairstow during the second Ashes Test at Lord's, Carey was once again at the centre of an unusual Australian appeal, as Bedingham - on 31 at the time, and in the final over before the lunch break - played off the back foot to Beau Webster, and inside-edged the ball into his pad-flap.

Although the on-field umpires, Richard Illingworth and Chris Gaffaney, subsequently called the ball dead, Bedingham's continued movements had briefly threatened to dislodge it from his pad-flap. With Carey swooping round from behind the stumps in a bid to gather it before it hit the turf, Bedingham responded by reaching down to his knee, and throwing the ball to the ground.

"Yeah, I think I panicked big time," Bedingham said at the close. "Because Carey was standing up, he was quite close. The umpires said, regardless, it was dead ball. But I think the way I picked up the ball and dropped it came across a bit dodgy."

Pat Cummins, Australia's captain, played down the moment in his post-match press conference, but acknowledged that he would likely have withdrawn the appeal had the umpires not signalled dead ball. Notably, he chose not to do this two years ago against England, when Carey capitalised on Bairstow's habit of walking out of his crease after each delivery to throw down his stumps with an opportunistic under-arm shy.

"I'm just glad they withdrew the appeal, because there [would be] more controversy and that type of stuff," Bedingham said. "I'm glad nothing happened out of it, really. The slip cordon just told me, 'don't panic, just leave it…' but in the moment, I think I panicked big-time."

The Bairstow dismissal caused a huge row, with Australia's fielders coming in for abuse from MCC members within the Long Room as they left the field at the end of the session, and England's captain Ben Stokes subsequently stating that he wouldn't want to win a game in such a manner after Australia sealed a 43-run win later that afternoon.

However, that moment, as with this latest incident, clearly fell within the remit of the laws of the game.

According to Fraser Stewart, MCC's head of cricket and the former laws manager, the eventual decision was "right for the game", even if a strict interpretation of the Law 20.1.1 - which pertains to dead balls - might argue that the ball hadn't been completely stationary at the moment of Bedingham's intervention.

According to the relevant laws, a ball becomes dead when: whether played or not it becomes trapped between the bat and person of a batter or between items of his/her clothing or equipment, [or] lodges in the clothing or equipment of a batter or the clothing of an umpire.

In a 2001 Test in Ahmedabad, England's Michael Vaughan was given out handling the ball after placing his hand on the ball after it had already hit the turf, seemingly to prevent it from rolling back onto his stumps.

Vaughan is the last of seven batters to be given out handled the ball in a Test match, because since 2017, that mode of dismissal has been subsumed into obstructing the field. In 2023-24, Bangladesh's Mushfiqur Rahim fell in that manner after handling the ball against New Zealand in Mirpur.