Mumbai: After claiming that he had almost come to blows with Kevin Pietersen, Mitchell Johnson has minced no words criticising Michael Clarke the “toxic” culture during his captaincy tenure as Mickey Arthur coached the Australian side.
Former Australian pacer, in his recently released autobiography ‘Resilient’, said that the things were so bad that some of his teammates did not want to play. Johnson added that following the retirement of Ricky Ponting in 2012, team environment went for a toss.
“The dynamics definitely changed. It became more groups in the team. It wasn’t a team as so. There was different little factions going on and it was very toxic. It (the toxic culture) just built very slowly but everybody could see it, everybody could feel it,” Johnson told Fox Sports News.
“Nothing was being done at that time, so it wasn’t a very enjoyable place to be and you’re supposed to be enjoying yourself when you’re playing for your country It was a pretty bad experience, bad time, a couple of us didn’t want to play. Even some of the young guys coming through could see it a mile away and they didn’t enjoy it, they said ‘state cricket’s so much more fun,” added the ex-Australian pacer.
The relationship between Johnson and Clarke went downhill following the ‘homeworkgate saga’ which saw Shane Watson, Usman Khawaja and James Pattinson alongwith Johnson being sent back to Australia from the tour of India in 2013.
Clarke, in his autobiography, had recently termed Watson was a part of the group that was like a “tumour”.
When Johnson was asked whether he too was a part of that tumour, Johnson denied.
“I didn’t feel like I was, and if it is directed at me, I didn’t feel like a tumour in the team. As a player I always tried to put the team first, look after the team, that’s what I wanted to achieve and playing for Australia you obviously want to give your best as a player and you work extremely hard to do that, to get the best out of yourself,” Johnson said.
“You want to help the people coming through and that just wasn’t happening at that stage because of those groups that were split so it was very difficult and if I’m a tumour, I’m a tumour whatever. I’ve passed all that kind of stuff, I got on with my cricket and tried to really enjoy towards the end of my career and that’s what I did,” concluded Johnson.
