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'Walk away. Weak as piss': Angry Bairstow and Stokes react to fan's 'fat' jibe at SCG

7th January, 2022
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7th January, 2022
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Ben Stokes and Jonny Bairstow have fired back at fans after being sledged for their weight by SCG fans, as the Sydney Test was marred by crowd abuse for the second successive year.

Following India’s Mohammed Siraj being allegedly racially abused during their Test 12 months ago, The Age reports both Stokes and Bairstow, who were noticeably unimpressed with the barbs as they headed off for the tea break, were taunted for their fitness.

“Stokes, you’re fat,” a fan was heard saying in a crowd-sourced video published on The Age website. Another urged Bairstow to “take your jumper off… lose some weight”.

The pair stared down the offending spectators for a number of tense seconds, with Bairstow appearing to fire back with: “That’s right. Just turn around and walk away. Weak as piss.”

Bairstow later told media it was important to stand up against the taunts, and then wryly observed it was a shame the ugly fans hadn’t been around to greet him at stumps after he had advanced to a century.

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“It was just a bit of bad bad mouthing. Obviously it’s not the greatest and it’s not needed,” Bairstow said. “We’re out there trying to do our jobs. People are out there enjoying the day’s cricket.

“Unfortunately sometimes you have people who overstep the mark and I think it’s important to stand up for ourselves because if we don’t stand up for ourselves you can cop it and especially when people overstep the mark they need to be told.

“It would have been nicer if they’d been there giving it when we walked off at the end… unfortunately they weren’t and missed the end of fantastic day’s Test cricket.”

Stokes is no stranger to crowd altercations. In a Test match against South Africa in Johannesburg in January 2020, he was caught on camera calling a fan a ‘f—ing four-eyed c–t’ after copping some lip after a dismissal.

Bairstow and Stokes were in the middle of one of England’s best batting partnerships in what has been a wretched tour, extending to 128 after the resumption before Stokes was trapped LBW off Nathan Lyon for 66.

Bairstow would push on, however, reaching his first Test century since England’s tour of Sri Lanka in November 2018 in the final over of the day.

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