The ball-tampering scandal that happened during the South Africa-Australia Test match at Cape Town earlier this year touched the nerves of lots of people in Australia including former players and media person.

Steve Smith, David Warner, and Cameron Bancroft received bans of various degrees after they admitted to being involved in changing the condition of the ball to win the match. This led to an investigation by Cricket Australia and an independent report found that the cause of all this was the culture of win at any cost that led to such an event.

A journalist with SEN Radio, Gerard Whateley, felt the rage of former Australian captain Michael Clarke after he blamed him for not being able to understand the problem in Australian cricket and calling Clarke “great climate denier”, as Clarke slammed Australia’s non-aggression pact.

Clarke called Whateley “nothing more than a headline-chasing coward” in a tweet reading, “Finally, Mr. Wheatley, if you think that the current No 1 team in the world of cricket right now puts being liked as of higher importance than being respected and playing to win inside the rules of our game, then you’re as delirious as you are ill-informed.”

“In the process of getting to number 1, I played to win, but played by the rules of the game and to a similar level of aggression to the other international teams I played against,” he wrote citing the fact that he took Australia from No. 5 position to the first-ranked team within 18 months in the longest format.

“For Gerard Wheatley – to insinuate that I am responsible for the ball tampering issue makes him nothing more than a headline-chasing coward,” he further added.

“Australian cricket I think need to stop worrying about being liked and start to worry about being respected. “Play tough Australian cricket, because whether we like it or not, that is in our blood. If you try and walk away from it, yeah we might be the most liked team in the world, we’re not going to win s**t, we won’t win a game. All we can want to do is want to win,” Clarke had said to a reporter on Macquarie Sports Radio on Tuesday.

In his response to the former skipper statements, Whateley on Wednesday said, “In cricketing terms, Michael Clarke is proving himself the last of the great climate deniers. When the cultural review identified the phenomenon of the gilded bubble where elite cricketers existed in a parallel universe blessed with wealth and privilege oblivious to outside perception and influence, it should’ve posted a photo of the former captain at the bottom of the page.”

(with indianexpress.com inputs)