Clarke, under whose captaincy Australia won their fifth World Cup in 2015, was harsh in criticism of the Australian team after they suffered their second consecutive defeat at the start of the 2023 World Cup last month.

Australia lost their first match to India in Chennai, followed by another defeat in Lucknow against South Africa. For a while, they were lingering at the bottom of the points table, having not opened their account.

Clarke had then said that if Australia were struggling against South Africa’s spinners, they’d do worse against those of the subcontinental teams. “I’m more worried about the subcontinent teams… if we’re getting shown up like that against South Africa, the spin in the subcontinent teams… we’ll be laughable,” Clarke said.

He even equated the Australian cricket team to the Wallabies, the Australian national rugby union team, who were eliminated in the early stages of the Rugby Union World Cup just before the Cricket World Cup.

“If we’re not careful, the conversation we’ve been having for the last three weeks about the Wallabies, in two weeks’ time we’ll be having that about Australian cricket,” Clarke said.

Australia, however, turned their campaign around dramatically, winning nine games in a row to go on to clinch the trophy for a record sixth time. Zampa ended up as the second-highest wicket-taker in the tournament with 23 wickets.

Taking a dig at Clarke, Zampa posted a story on Instagram, quoting Clarke’s scathing comments from earlier in the tournament and followed it up with several laughing emojis.

[caption id=”attachment_593241″ align=”alignnone” width=”750″] Adam Zampa’s Instagram story[/caption]

Zampa, who made his ODI debut in 2016, a year after Clarke’s retirement, has not played international cricket with the former World Cup-winning captain.

Australia’s next assignment will be a five-match T20I series against India, from which Zampa has been rested with young leggie Tanveer Sangha given an opportunity instead.