Australia may have snatched a convincing victory over their arch-rival England in the first Ashes test match to soothe their earlier misery against the same team. However, it may take some time to heal other wounds. During the final stages of the match, Aussie captain Michael Clarke told Englishman Jimmy Anderson that he would be left with a broken arm. He added insult to the injury by ornamenting his sentence with the F-word.

Anderson complained to the umpires, Kumar Dharmasena (Sri Lanka) and Aleem Dar (Pakistan), that the Aussie fielders were sledging him. While the umpires apparently tried to calm things down, it was the Aussie captain who thought it would be better to remind Anderson what his team was capable of. However, he did it in such a way that did not go well with the reputation of the game being called the 'gentleman's game'.

It would, nevertheless, be unfair to call this incident taking place out of the blue, as Clarke and Anderson do not seem to share an amicable relation with each other. While Anderson called Clarke 'paranoid' before the series began, Clarke refused to accept that he hit below the belt by threatening Anderson of breaking his arm. He said that things said in the cricket field should be left in the field itself. He insisted that the English players were well aware that they were respected by the Aussies.

English captain Alastair Cook, on the other hand, refused to criticise his Australian counterpart for the incident. He agreed that the series was supposed to be pretty much like warfare, when Ashes series clock is quickly coming to a close. Cook also said that people would normally expect such verbal altercations on the cricket field. He, on the contrary, was critical about Aussie batsman David Warner complaining against Jonathon Trott's dismissal. He said that it was disrespectful on Warner's part.

With such a beginning of the series, one may wonder how nasty things are going to be in the coming days when the battle between the teams will be even more intense.

Update: ICC is going to penalise Clarke for abusing against Anderson. A part of his match-fee will be deducted.

Video from: YouTube/Sky Sports