Twitter users and sports lovers were spectators to a terse stand-off between Australian cricketer Mitchell Johnson and The Times of India this morning. It all started when the official ICC handle posted part of an interview with Johnson conducted by Sumit Mukherjee, a senior journalist and the deputy national sports editor of the TOI.

The piece efficiently set the stage for what it called a “free-wheeling” chat, describing Johnson’s “casual” attire in a “navy blue T-shirt and a pair of white bermudas” with his “spiky hair, drooping moustache and heavily tattooed forearms and biceps”. The piece detailed India’s ongoing test series down, especially the bowling attack on the two sides. At one point, Johnson compliments Indian pacer Jasprit Bumrah: “He hardly bowls a loose delivery, which means he is hard to score off and any batsman will think twice before taking him on.”

It was a routine enough interview but what happened next will shock you.

Johnson quoted ICC’s tweet on Twitter, saying he didn’t “recall” the interview. “I do agree with parts of it but I never sat down with anyone from memory.” He also quoted TOI’s tweet saying he wasn’t in Melbourne and had never sat down with Mukherjee for the interview.

He added that he’d talked to “many journalists casually” through the first two Test matches but hadn’t “agreed to an interview or on the record chats”.

Hours later, TOI put out its own statement, saying it stood by its story. It said the interview hadn’t been a “formal sit-down one” and had been “conducted over several short sessions interspersed with Johnson’s commentary stints”. It backed this up with a photograph of Mukherjee and Johnson.

Here lies the issue: Johnson called it “chats” casually had with journalists; saying it’s a privacy issue if a journalist then reported it. TOI calls it, by its own admission, a “free-wheeling chat” in the piece, but then says it also took place over several sessions, the implication being the conversations would have been on the record for them to have published it. It’s unsurprising that Johnson expressed his own dubiousness because the piece, with its colouful background of his blue T-shirt and white shorts, pins the interview down to one particular meeting, not a series of interactions.

Sumit Mukherjee refused Newslaundry’s request for a comment, directing us instead to TOI’s official statement. However, a high-placed source within TOI told Newslaundry that Mukherjee had met Johnson “during his commentary breaks. They had conversations over 2-3 days. There’s nothing out of context, there’s nothing which is off the record.”

The source emphasised that Mukherjee, who has covered cricket for over 32 years, “used the quotes which Johnson has given, nothing else. Nothing in it is stolen or manufactured. We stand by our interview.” He admitted that it was not “a chat, there were several chats”.

In response to Mitchell’s claim that he hadn’t been in Melbourne, the source pointed out that the story’s dateline merely referred to where the story had been filed. “This is an absolutely nonsensical thing to say. The conversations took place during the Perth Test.” Indeed article datelines do not state where the reports are covered, but where they’re filed.

Johnson clearly doesn’t seem to think he was speaking on the record, though he abandoned the conversation shortly afterwards to post songs on Twitter. Meanwhile, the TOI piece stays up though the ICC handle dutifully deleted their post.

Johnson responded later in the day, however. He said a selfie was not “proof an interview took place”. He said: “I do recall this man lurking around during the test match trying to listen in on conversations I was having with other journalists. So I can only assume his so called Q & A was loosely based on parts of conversation he partially overheard me have with other people”.

TOI responded to Johnson on December 25 with Sumit Mukherjee’s comments. Mukherjee said he’d interacted with Johnson over days 2, 3 and 4 of the Perth Test. He said he did not “touch” any of the replies that were off-the-record, and it was also “incorrect” to say he had overheard Johnson’s conversations with other journalists.