Mitchell Johnson: I will sledge India if Warner does not

Mitchell Johson has vowed to sledge if needed

The Indian team has been in Australia for close to four months, and are now all set to play the World Cup semifinal against Australia. Traditionally, India-Australia matches have always been spiced up by the heated exchanges on the field; shile the Australians seem to have mastered the art of “sledging”, the young Indian young brigade is also not shy about rubbing it in the opposition’s face.

The history of on-field arguments between the two cricketing giants is filled with many personal altercations between specific players. As expected, both the teams gave each other quite a lot of stick during the Test series and the triangular series leading to the all-important World Cup.

With the two old foes set to face each other in the crunch semifinal at the SCG, you can bet that tempers will run wild again, and there might be some bad blood in the heat of the moment.

While some players like David Warner gave a hint about wanting to maintain a clean chit during the match and play it safe, Mitchell Johnson has made it absolutely clear that he wants to be the big bully at the park. This is what he said:

“I heard Davy said he wasn't going to get involved in all that stuff, Someone's got to do it and I might put my hand up. It's part of the game and what happened the other day with Shane (Watson) and Wahab (Riaz) was exceptional. I thought it was great entertainment and I think you're going to see more entertainment in this game.”

"I love it. The more that comes my way, the better," he added.

Johnson’s “love affair” with India is widely known as the 33-year-old smashed 88 off 93 during the recently held Border Gavaskar Trophy and had some confrontations with the Indian players. He doesn’t mind a bit of banter in the middle and believes that it brings the better out of him.

Will the Indian players take the bait and respond in kind, or will they tune out all the abuse and just focus on their cricket? Thursday promises to be a fascinating day of cricket!