Mitchell Johnson added that he could have avoided the ball-tampering part in his David Warner column but asserted that whatever he wrote was his views.
Mitchell Johnson and David Warner were teammates for a long time. Reuters
Mitchell Johnson has explained that a message from David Warner which was ‘quite personal’ led to the former pacer launching a scathing attack on the Australian opener. Johnson in his recent column slammed the decision to grant Warner a “hero send-off” from Test cricket as he was involved in the ball-tampering scandal of 2018.
Warner has been selected for the upcoming Test series against Pakistan which means he would be able to retire after a match at his home ground in Sydney, something that he had said he wanted to do.
Johnson had written that Warner didn’t deserve such a send-off as he “never really owned the ball-tampering scandal” in Cape Town in 2018. Now the pacer has revealed what led to him being so critical of his former teammate.
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On The Mitchell Johnson Cricket Show podcast, the former Australian cricketer said he received a “disappointing” message from Warner earlier this year in response to the former fast bowler’s column question Warner’s wife Candice Warner publicly defending the opener’s place in the Test squad.
“I got a message from Dave, which was quite personal,” Johnson said. “I tried to ring to try and talk to him about it, which I’ve always been open to. I know I’ve been open to the guys when I finished playing. I said if I’m in the media and writing things or saying things that you don’t like, just come and speak to me.
“It was never a personal thing then until this point. This is probably what drove me to write the article as well, part of it. It was definitely a factor. Some of the stuff that was said in that, I won’t say it. I think that’s up to Dave to say it if he wants to talk about it. There was some stuff in there that was extremely disappointing, what he said, and pretty bad to be honest,” he said.
Johnson also added that he could have avoided the ball-tampering part but asserted that whatever he wrote in the column was his views.
“It was probably distasteful and something that I think didn’t need to be said. Apart from that, it’s all proof read and I sign off on it. I did come up with this myself. This was something that popped into my head early in the week that I wanted to speak about. And I actually gave myself a few days to go through it,” he said. “I’m not looking for attention. It’s just my opinion and how I see it.”