Virgil said:
Turban are you taking the piss?
600 replays and you still think the ball hit the bails, how can it have hit the bails when his gloves were in front of the stumps coming down and collect the ball.
Sorry but hes a fucken cheat who MUST have know his gloves knocked the bails off, look at his face right after it happens...
First off let me say I don't like Haddin, he has grown on me marginally (so i no longer hate him) by virtue of mass failings in the batting line-up and his relative, and limited success. He is really just keeping the gloves warm for Luke Ronchi. As it stands I don't get to watch much local cricket so I had never really grown to respect Haddin anyway. When Gilly retired and Haddin joined the team all I really knew about him is that Murali got him with a Doosra between the legs and made him look like a total goose.
Secondly, I think claiming such a close stumping (or a close catch for that matter) without question is the stuff of dickheads like Clarke and Ponting (now Haddin can join them). I DO NOT have any cricketing experience outside of kids stuff which i quit when I was 10, that was almost 20 yrs ago now, so I'm coming from a position of ignorance in terms of playing the game. I cannot say either way if he would/should have known what he did or what his intentions were and that is why I'm not going to call him a cheat. All I can do it look at the replay 600 times and say "This is what it looks like to me". To be honest I never focused on looking at his face, only his hands, will check that out when i get home as the replay is bookmarked.
I've never been a keeper, if anyone has and thinks he MUST have known and MUST be a cheat I would love to hear your opinion. I can't make that call because I have not got that experience and to my slow eyes it looks accdental. I said not admitting it is a totally shithouse thing to do, but it's not dissimilar from a rugby player claiming a try they know they didn't score and I think the date it occured has done Haddin no favours at all. I still think these are valid points.
Finally, I didn't say the ball hit the bails. I said the ball knocked the bails off indirectly by hitting his gloves into them. Watching the reply I didn't see how anyone could say he moved his hands to deliberatly knock the bails off after he caught it. I can see his gloves moving thou, due to the ball hitting them. He's a poor sport & he's a dickhead for not saying anything and I've lost the respect I had for him but I can't call him a cheat because cheating requires pre-meditation and it just looked like he wasn't man enought to admit he made a mistake.