Dylan Cleaver: You call it sledging, I call it abuse

David Warner (left) sparked an angry confrontation after telling Rohit Sharma to speak English. Photo / News Ltd

Close to 23 years ago, in the middle of the Cricket World Cup round-robin matches, New Zealand took on a proud but fading West Indian empire at Eden Park.

On that day in 1992, the Mark Greatbatch legend was in ascendancy after being given licence to thrill.

He upper-cut current West Indian bowling coach Curtley Ambrose over third man and "semi-charged" the late, great Malcolm Marshall while hitting him over cover for another huge six.

The West Indians hated it. Marshall, with only a hint of hyperbole, told Greatbatch he'd kill him if he ever charged him again, while attack dogs Desmond Haynes and Keith Arthurton - a man whose bat could never match his mouth for production - sledged relentlessly from the infield.

The dimensions and calibration of the old park might have changed since that day, but most of the peripherals will be the same: a big, lubricated crowd; a home team that has captured the public's imagination and is in rollicking form; and an opposition that will not take a backward step and doesn't mind having the odd chat.

In the days leading up to the biggest match of the World Cup so far, a potential flashpoint encounter, New Zealand have taken an interesting approach to the issue of sledging.

Coach Mike Hesson said his team would "soak it up as best we can", while Corey Anderson yesterday followed the party line: "Their [Australia's] sledging tactics are well known now and something we haven't involved ourselves in. We're fairly neutral on the field."

It's a curious tactic, a paradox even. New Zealand are being vocally non-vocal before a ball, let alone an epithet, has been fired in anger.

They are essentially convicting Australia on historic evidence.

You may recall, Australian opener David Warner recently took cricketing discourse to a new and uncomfortable place when putting a linguistic challenge in front of India's Rohit Sharma, "politely" asking the Hindi speaker if he wouldn't mind speaking English.

Targeting Warner has become a sport in itself, so it is only fair to mention that while he is an enthusiastic on-field orator, he is far from alone.

His captain Michael Clarke recently told James Anderson to get ready for a grammatically ambiguous "broken f***ing arm" and sympathy would have been short on the ground for the England fast bowler, whose recent form reportedly includes telling India captain MS Dhoni he was a "f***ing fat c***".

It's all utterly charmless stuff and that's the problem with modern-day sledging - it just isn't funny or clever. Whenever you see those lists of best cricket sledges appear, they're all taken from decades ago when the cricket was hard, but it was still possible to share a beer and a joke in the changing sheds after.

Nowadays, what they call sledging is just verbal assault.

So all power to New Zealand if they've decided to take the high road, but they want to have kept it to themselves.

You can almost see Warner in a hotel lobby right now, hearing of Anderson's comments, leaning back and saying: "W***er."

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