Warner believes McCullum should focus on trying to beat Australia rather than talk about them
Australian vice-captain David Warner has lashed out at Brendon McCullum after the comments the New Zealand captain made about Warner and Australian captain Steven Smith in newspaper columns this year. Warner believed that McCullum should just stick to playing cricket rather than commenting about it, reports cricket.com.au.
McCullum had written a column in September for the Daily Mail about Smith's decision to appeal against Ben Stokes’ obstructing the field in the second one-day international between England and Australia at Lord's.
In the column, McCullum believed that Smith blew a chance to play in the spirit of cricket by appealing for what was a controversial incident. McCullum called Smith ‘immature’ for not having withdrawn the appeal.
Smith had responded to the claims saying that he had no regrets about what happened and that he would not have changed a thing if he had to face the same situation again.
“That doesn’t happen too often, but I think it was nice to look back and be able to say if that happened again I’d do the same thing. No regrets,” Smith said.
McCullum had earlier written about how Warner did not applaud Joe Root's century in the first Ashes Test in Cardiff. In the same Test, Warner and Nathan Lyon had interrupted Stokes’ ritual of scraping the crease before he bats. McCullum felt that Warner needed to show more respect to his opponents.
Warner responded to McCullum's comment by saying that he had indeed applauded Root and that the cameras did not capture him do that. The Australian southpaw believed that McCullum should spend more time trying to think about how to beat the Australians instead of only making comments.
“I don't quite understand how a current cricket captain decides to play this brand of cricket on the field which is the Mr Nice Guys and then all of a sudden think he can comment on the way an Ashes series has panned out,” Warner said.
“He should actually just watch the game and try and work out what they have to do to try and beat us instead of commenting on it. That's something I've found a bit weird at the time. But at the end of the day he wanted to do that and obviously he got paid for it,” he continued.
Warner also spoke about how Australia will continue to play in their usual aggressive style. The Aussies are not looking to back down and will be trying to become the Number 1 cricket team in all formats.
“The guys are still going to stay aggressive that's for sure, but I don't think much is going to be said anyway,” Warner said.
New Zealand have not managed to win a Test series in Australia since 1985. McCullum will be hoping to inspire his players to a historic victory in the upcoming Test series. The first Test of the three-match Test series between Australia and New Zealand starts on Thursday at the Gabba.