Why Mitchell Johnson should be praised not pilloried for attacking David Warner - Chris Waters

The essential details of the set-to are these…

Following Warner’s inclusion in Australia’s squad for the first Test against Pakistan in Perth, Johnson wrote a newspaper column in which he strongly criticised his former team-mate.

Johnson took particular exception to Warner having effectively picked his own retirement date - the final match of the series at his home ground of Sydney early next month - despite having averaged just 26.7 in his previous 36 Test innings, likening it to the arrogance Warner displayed in the ball-tampering scandal.

“It’s been five years and David Warner has still never really owned the ball-tampering scandal,” wrote Johnson in The West Australian, referring to the events at Cape Town in 2018 when Warner, Steve Smith and Cameron Bancroft were involved in a plot to alter the ball’s condition with sandpaper and banned.

“Now the way he is going out is underpinned by more of the same arrogance and disrespect to our country.

“As we prepare for David Warner’s farewell series, can somebody please tell me why? Why a struggling Test opener gets to nominate his own retirement date? And why a player at the centre of one of the biggest scandals in Australian cricket history warrants a hero’s send-off?”

There was plenty more where that came from as Johnson let rip in a fashion that recalled his salad days with the ball.

“Does this really warrant a swansong, a last hurrah against Pakistan that was forecast a year in advance as if he was bigger than the game and the Australian cricket team?” he added.

Not to be outdone, Warner responded by scoring 164 in the first innings in Perth, making a “hush” gesture after reaching his century and leaping in the air. His wife, Candice, followed up with a “shush” emoji on social media.

Earlier this year, Candice and Johnson were involved in another row about Warner’s form in which she claimed that Johnson’s opinions “don’t have a lot of merit” and he labelled her defence of him “weird and cringey”. Christmas cards are unlikely to have been exchanged between the Warners and Johnsons.

The key point, though, is this: since his newspaper column at the start of the month, Johnson has suffered for giving a view.

Cricket Australia axed him from two speaking events for fear that it would imply support of his remarks and offend the current players who, surprise surprise, have rallied behind Warner.

And Justin Langer, the former Australia coach, wrote in his own column in the same newspaper that Johnson had broken ‘the unwritten rule’.

“I hate it when men from the rare club of playing cricket for Australia air any of their grievances publicly,” said Langer.

“I believe in a simple ethos of ‘praise in public, criticise in private’. In other words, if you want to say something publicly, be positive and use the opportunity to praise the person you are talking about.”

Sorry, but what is Langer prattling on about, what are Cricket Australia doing, and on what basis does Langer have a newspaper column of his own? This may come as a shock to some former players, even to some readers, but the whole point of a column is to give an opinion (yes, technically, Langer was giving his as well, but you take the point).

It is why so many former players make for lousy columnists, pundits, commentators, and so on - especially those who are recently retired/too close to the dressing room.

If you want an example of an exception to this type of sycophantic trend, which includes fans with laptops masquerading as journalists, then look at someone like Michael Vaughan.

You might not always agree with the former England captain, but you will be in little doubt what he thinks about things and he will always give his view. It was the same with Sir Geoffrey Boycott, a casualty of Test Match Special’s alarming decline.

Indeed, after TMS lost the rights to cover England’s tour to India in the New Year, Boycott wrote in the Daily Telegraph that the programme “is now so politically correct that it is a shadow of the great, iconic programme that was loved by cricket fans the world over”.

In so doing, of course, he was giving a strong opinion, the sort so badly missed since his departure - one that also deprived listeners of someone who has a knowledge of, and appreciation for, the game’s history, an increasingly rare breed.

No, more power to Mitchell Johnson and those like him who are brave enough to give an honest take.

The game, the media, needs more of that.