Player-journalist spats nothing new in cricket

WHEN Dave Warner was off his long run on Twitter, with me in his sights, on Saturday morning there was one consoling thought.

WHEN Dave Warner was off his long run on Twitter, with me in his sights, on Saturday morning there was one consoling thought.

He wasn't Charlie Griffith.

Warner might have thrown a few ugly names around but that's kids stuff compared the day an old colleague faced former West Indian tearaway Charlie Griffith in a corridor of a Perth hotel in the 1960s.

The Sydney scribe saw Griffith on a date with an Australian entrant in a Miss Universe contest and thought the two of them would make a great picture story.

"You can write it if you like,'' said Griffith, before moving his mouth to with within a centimetre of the journalist's left ear and whispering "but if you do it will be your last act on this earth.''

No Twitter rant could produce such a chillingly theatrical nuance.

Blow-ups between press and players have been a constant theme of cricket long before Warner got angry with the world (actually me and Malcolm Conn) at 4am Indian time on Saturday.

Sometimes the flashpoints appear like lightning bolts.

Critics who thought New Zealand cricket was boring had to think again after captain Martin Crowe provided the most stunning opening line to a press conference in 1993.

Fed up about rumours about his troubled marriage, Crowe opened proecedings with the seven-word stunner "Trevor, do you think I am a homosexual?''

Player-press arguments have ranged from full-blown slanging matches to quirky differences of opinion.

One of these involved Michael Kasprowicz, arguably the only cricketer to ever become frustrated at being painted as the decent man he is. Affirmation, not defamation, was Kasper's problem.

"I wish you blokes would stop all these Kasper the friendly ghost headlines,'' Kasprowicz once bashfully told journalists.

"I don't know how I am supposed to intimidate anyone with all this Mr Nice Guy stuff.''

The press decided that day the only thing that could reshape Kasprowicz's image was a fearsome nickname.

Someone suggested a name change to the provocative "Psychowicz'' and there was also a push for "Mike Manimal'', as in half-man, half-animal.

In end it was decided a man can only be himself and Kasper was left to be Kasper.

The mode of combat has changed over the years.

Even if Twitter had been around in the early 1990s former England captain Mike Atherton would not have used it in preference to inviting me to "come for a walk behind the sightscreen'' at Bellerive Oval, Tasmania.

Atherton was a square-jawed, give-it-to-you-straight Manchester man.

The intensity of his stance and stare captured in the photo of us mid-argument says all you need to know about the steel within.

That day he unleashed a blistering verbal spray about a story he claimed was mischievous journalism and he was furious with me for writing it and Melbourne's Age for printing it.

"That's fine Mike, but just one small thing - I don't work for The Age, mate, so it's not my story,'' I said.

Atherton said he would check his facts and two days later apologised, the mark of an admirable man.

Some are harder to beat than others in off-field jousts.

The day I left to cover my first international cricket tour in 1992, I asked an Australian slow bowler whether he had any tips.

He said: "Just one ... if you take on (coach) Bob Simpson in an argument get your facts ready because he's got a quick mind, will be impeccably researched, and won't argue unless he knows he will win.''

And so it was.

In three epic blues with Simmo, he was so quick I barely landed a punch, never mind win an argument.

Some players were greatly admired for being strong and convincing for and against you.

Adam Gilchrist, with a well defined sense of right and wrong, had this skill.

Once in India when I lampooned him for appealing for an lbw shout that had clearly come off the bat the story had been on the internet for five minutes when he rang my hotel room from his.

"I can't believe what you have written,'' he said. "You heard how loud the crowd was today. I did not hear a thing and I wasn't sure what the ball hit so I was entitled to appeal.''

Indeed he was. Got that wrong.

Gilchrist could be a strident critic one day and a sincere endorser the next, sometimes congratulating a journalist on a good story or even an awkward one with lines like, "I wish you had not written it, but it was right.''

He played his last game of cricket in India on the weekend, leaving as a man of substance who set an eternal benchmark for class and character.