David Warner has been told by Cricket Australia to “stop looking for trouble” after his ugly stoush with Indian batsman Rohit Sharma.

The opener was fined half his one-day match fee by the ICC for confronting Sharma and demanding he “speak English” during Australia’s four-wicket win at the MCG on Sunday night.

The fiery exchange was sparked by a contentious run Sharma took off a Warner overthrow.

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New Zealand cricket great Martin Crowe labelled his behaviour “thuggish” and slammed the 28-year-old as being the most juvenile cricketer he had ever seen.

CA chief executive James Sutherland said he’d spoken to Warner about the incident and was satisfied the comments were not racially motivated.

“That said, I have reminded him that he needs to carefully reconsider the manner in which he approaches these sorts of situations in the future,” Sutherland said on Monday.

“He has worked very hard on his leadership and behaviour over the past 12 months and I have told him very clearly that instances like this only serve to set back the progress he has made.

“Quite simply, he needs to stop looking for trouble.

“This is the second time he has been before the ICC match referee this season and that’s twice too often.”

Warner admitted on Monday he was at fault and shouldn’t have approached Sharma.

“When I went over to say something to him, he sort of said something in their language and I said `speak English’ because, if you’re going to say something, understand that theoretically I cannot speak Hindi,” he told Sky Sports Radio.

“I did the polite thing and asked him to speak English, therefore he did and I can’t repeat what he said.

“I was in the wrong … I shouldn’t have engaged him.”

But Warner added that didn’t mean he was going to tone down his aggressive style.

“If people get on the wrong side of me, I’m not going to back down,” he said.

“We’re always there to play hard aggressive cricket, but you know what comes with that – sometimes you are going to get fined.

“We’ve just got to keep trying not to cross that line, because we’re all about playing cricket the right way.”

Australia coach Darren Lehmann said the exchange wasn’t a good look but backed his star batsman.

“David’s an aggressive character and we support that,” Lehmann said.

“It’s just making sure he does the right thing on the ground. He knows that better than most, anyway. We’ll work with him with that.

“If the ICC decides we cross the line, then they’ll come down on us – we all know that.

“We’re always going to teeter pretty close to it – that’s the way that we play – we’ve just got to make sure that we don’t cross it.”