THE ASHES HE-SAID, SHE-SAID SHOWS NO SIGNS OF RELENTING

Anderson, Root and Smith all wade in as verbal sparring keeps on coming

England and Australia's cricketers continued their game of he-said, she-said as the build-up to another Ashes Test became obscured by playground nonsense.

The sides have exchanged verbals for much of the past month and, with less than 24 hours to go before the start of their second meeting, in Adelaide, they were at it again on Friday.

This time it was Jimmy Anderson who landed the first blow, in a Daily Telegraph column which labelled the Australia players “bullies” following the molehill-to-mountain tale of Jonny Bairstow’s game of head conkers with Cameron Bancroft in Perth several weeks ago.

“A bully waits until they are in the ascendancy to pounce on people,” Anderson wrote. “That is what Australian teams do.”

Opposing captain Steve Smith didn't wait long to shoot back at Anderson during his pre-match press conference on Friday.

“I read the article. I think it’s interesting coming from Jimmy calling us bullies and big sledgers,” Smith said. 

^{Steve Smith seems happy to be involved in the word games}

“I think he’s one of the biggest sledgers in the game to be perfectly honest with you.

“I remember back in 2010 when I first started and wasn’t any good, he was pretty happy to get stuck into me then.

“Interesting coming from Jimmy.”

This tour is only a month or so old, and there are will be copious more opportunities for players to mouth off, yet the soundbites are already becoming tedious.

 

 

Still, neither team shows any sign of being able to stop the sparring and so to England captain Joe Root, who wasn't happy about Smith laughing in front of the cameras while Bancroft relived the night of Bairstow’s Eskimo kiss.

“If that's not motivation to our players then seriously I don't know what is,” said Root.

“You are obviously very disappointed but to then see a reaction like that in a press conference? If that can't get you up for the next game I don't know what can.

“Hopefully that will work massively in our favour. Knowing the characters in our dressing room, that will really give them a bit of something else to make sure we put things right this week.”

Smith clarified that he was laughing at the story being told, which let's face it was worth a giggle, rather than openly mocking Bairstow.

^{Joe Root has had his say on Smith laughing in a press conference}

“I certainly wasn’t mocking his team. I was laughing at Cameron and the way he delivered the events of what had happened,” Smith said.

“He was very dry and different in the way things came across. You guys got a good laugh out of it as much as I did.

“I’m happy to clarify that with Joe Root, no problem there at all.”

But where's the fun in clarifications?

After all, there's an Ashes series to be argued over… sorry, to be played.

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