On the Buttler run out, Jayawardene said: “We gave him a fair chance.” Senanayake gave him two warnings in the 42nd over before removing the bails in the 44th, and Sri Lanka claimed they had also raised the issue at Lord’s during Buttler’s brilliant century. “I think we had to do it because they kept doing it,” Jayawardene said. “We analysed the Lord’s game and they took 22 twos in the last 10 overs – Ravi [Bopara] and him ran riot.
“We’ve always tried to play in the right spirit but if the other teams are not going by the right spirit, not going by the law which is written, we have to take the law into our own hands. It’s fair enough I think.”The facts are remarkably clear. The Buttler incident, taken together with the Thirimanne incident in Brisbane (see this detailed report by Sidharth Monga), clarifies the status of the warning. From Jayawardene's comments it is clear that Sri Lanka hold that when Buttler continued to back up prematurely even after the warning, he was doing so deliberately. Sri Lanka first established to their own satisfaction that Buttler was backing up too far intentionally, and then effected the dismissal.
It is remarkable that this fact hasn't been remarked upon. Perhaps because even those members of the English press who think what Sri Lanka did was fine, cannot bring themselves to examine the fact that the English player was deliberately trying to gain an unfair advantage.
Now, it is probably the case that even Thirimanne was trying to gain an unfair advantage. But it has to be shown. Cricket is a game played by human beings, not by automatons who can only follow precise rules and cease to function (or malfunction) in the absence of such rules.
What would happen if a team were to effect a dismissal at the non-strikers end before the bowler entered his delivery stride? This would run the risk of a batsman being penalized for absentmindedness with a dismissal. It could simply be that the batsman had mistimed his start because he misread the bowler's run up. It is good and proper that this possibility is eliminated by making the batsman aware that he's backing up too far. If the batsman persists, then logically, one of two possibilities are in play.
1. The player is knowingly backing up too far to gain an advantage, perhaps to run twos as Jayawardene suggests in this case (or to get on strike, say because the player is batting with a tailender)
2. The player is stupid, or "dozy".
The latter, I suggest, is highly unlikely in international cricket.
It is no surprise that Jayawardene explicitly accused England of "not going by the right spirit". This is unambigious and a precise point. The reasonable journalist would ask Alastair Cook about this in the next press conference. What's more, he would press him on the facts.
Why did Buttler continue to back up too far even after the warning? Is this team policy? Is this the way he has been coached? Does Peter Moores think backing up too far is appropriate?
I doubt we'll ever know, because I doubt there is a reporter in England who will dare question the England captain on a specific point of fact. The pointed follow up seems to be absent in day to day corporate journalism unless it exists in the context of a TV show.