Daryll Cullinan has hit back strongly at former England captain Andrew ‘Freddie’ Flintoff’s allegation that his sledging was ‘the worst I have ever seen’.

‘What he said about there’s no place in sport like that, I think he has embellished the story a bit too much. I think he’s typical of a hasbeen at the moment. He’s trying to stay in the limelight, travelling around the world and I think someone should just sit him down and just say to him he’s being quite a cricket comic quite frankly,’ the former Protea top-order batsman told CapeTalk567.

Flintoff had said earlier on Thursday that ‘one of the first Test matches I played against South Africa, there was one fella … he was the worst I have ever come across – Daryll Cullinan. He was horrible. I was only young. The words he called me I didn’t even know what they meant.’

‘If I wanted to say something to him I would have said it to him in English. The only other language I’m fluent in is Afrikaans, so you certainly don’t want to sledge or say something to them in a language they don’t understand. Anyway that’s his opinion. I think he’s just embellished the whole thing, which Flintoff is about these days.’

Cullinan played 70 Tests for South Africa, scoring 4 554 runs for his country at an average of 44.21 with a highest score of 275 not out (in 1999), a national record at the time. He is also the youngest South African to score a first-class hundred (at the age of 16, breaking Graeme Pollock’s mark).

‘I can’t actually remember what I said. You’re asking me about something 19 years ago. What’s the point in having something to say about it. I think he’s looking for attention quite frankly,’ Cullinan told the radio station.

‘This whole talk about sledging … the worst sledging that I got was as a  16 year-old coming into first class cricket. [Playing] with some real old buggers who gave me a hard time being a schoolboy, it hasn’t gone away. It has always been there.

‘Maybe Andrew is right, perhaps in those days there was a bit more. But I think the fact that the microphones are on, the fact that the camera productions and the crew and the cameramen are so good today and so in tune with what’s happening … they can sniff that’s something’s happening, something’s brewing.’