Mitchell Johnson v David Warner: What’s the truth behind fracture in Australian playing group

While the current crop of Aussie World Cup champions can’t wait for their reunion, the 2015 rendition may never get theirs. Here’s why.

Travis Head said five minutes after Australia’s World Cup victory in India that he already couldn’t wait for the reunion.

But members of the champion team from 2015 can certainly wait for their impending 10-year get-together … in fact it may never happen.

Mitchell Johnson’s vicious attack on David Warner and George Bailey – and Bailey’s cryptic response – has lit a fuse underneath a lacklustre summer that, in one sense, was desperately needed, but at what cost?

The bitter fallout between several members of an outstanding era of Australian cricketers is a fundamentally sad state of affairs.

Especially when it’s sandwiched between the affection Head and current teammates hold for each other and the golden generation captained by Ricky Ponting, who organise annual trips with each other and are still as tight as brothers.

The tragic deaths of Shane Warne and Andrew Symonds was a sobering reminder to their former teammates that life is short, and if you don’t make an effort to catch up and celebrate the old times, it can be too late to get that time back again.

It is not compulsory to stay best mates with blokes you played cricket with – in fact the individual nature of the sport means teams are often made up of very different personalities who will never be close.

Mitchell Johnson (L) has surprised many by taking pot shots at former teammates David Warner and George Bailey. Picture: Colleen Petch

But when you share in some of the great achievements Australian sport has to offer, like the 5-0 Ashes whitewash of England in the 2013-14 summer and conquering the pressures, that proved too great for India, to win the 2015 World Cup on home soil, you would like to think there is an indelible bond created there that is never lost.

What these players achieved, with a nation watching on, was special, rare and did not come easily.

But after the comments made over the past 48 hours, coupled with Johnson’s withering attacks on Pat Cummins and his former fast bowling teammates two years ago, you wonder how some of these guys can possibly get in the same room together in just over 12 months’ time for the 10-year anniversary they’re due for their World Cup heroics at the MCG.

The 10-year anniversary of Australia’s home World Cup triumph is little more than a year away. Picture: Mark Stewart

The team captained by Michael Clarke are sadly a team that’s fallen apart and these are rifts that won’t easily heal.

Johnson was out in the middle with an 18-year-old Cummins when he hit the winning runs against South Africa on Test debut, and he was arguably Nathan Lyon’s most loved mentor when he came into Test cricket.

But the WhatsApp group Johnson, Cummins, Lyon, Josh Hazlewood and Mitchell Starc once shared has fallen silent ever since Johnson exploded over Justin Langer’s demise as coach, calling Cummins’ “gutless”.

Now things have got personal between Johnson and Bailey and Warner.

It’s felt Clarke doesn’t share close relationships with many teammates from this era either, but the former skipper said on radio on Monday morning that he hopes Warner and Bailey seek Johnson out in Perth – or vice versa – during the first Test and talk it out.

His sentiment was right.

Let’s hope in another 10 years the acid has cleared and we aren’t still talking about the 2015 champions as the fractured champions.