Warne continues his battle with Collingwood

LONDON - Former Australian spinner Shane Warne has turned up the heat on his continuous feud with English batsman Paul Collingwood, with this time commenting on his performance in the World Twenty20 tournament.

“There was no imagination, no flair. He (Collingwood) was too busy trying to drive his Aston Martin and fly around in helicopters, rather than trying to work on his captaincy. Australia will be wishing Paul Collingwood is captain in The Ashes because he is not very good at all,” the Sun quoted Warne, as saying.

The pair have been involved in various on and off-field confrontations, the most famous being when Warne claimed that Collingwood should be embarrassed at receiving an MBE for contributing just 17 runs (in one Test) to the 2005 Ashes win.

However, Collingwood has insisted that sledging is not an approach that he wants to follow.

“We want the cricket to do the talking. I played a lot of cricket in Australia as a youngster - I went there first in 1996. They come hard at you, it is in their culture,” said Collingwood.

“They don’t like Pommies, simple as that. You feel that as a player going out to bat. But we have some very strong characters in our team who can stand up if something needs to be said,” he added. (ANI)