There’s a fascinating article by Andrew Webster in today’s Sydney Morning Herald and The Age newspapers.
Michael Clarke is at war with his superiors. And, as much as he belligerently holds onto the idea of playing for his country again, it is also clear his teammates have moved on without him.
There are two issues at play here: Clarke’s broken relationship with Cricket Australia management and his relationship with his teammates.
The captain has been on a collision course for months with almost every level of the Cricket Australia hierarchy, from chief executive James Sutherland to high-performance manager Pat Howard to chairman of selectors Rod Marsh to coach Darren Lehmann. Some officials complain he’s refused to return their phone calls.
Privately, he is furious about selectors setting a deadline of February 21 — the second pool match against Bangladesh — to prove his fitness for the World Cup after hamstring surgery.
An eternal optimist and tireless when it comes to preparation, Clarke is adamant he will be fit – although most behind the scenes tell you he is a slim prospect at best.
They predict he won’t recover in time, and that’s when the hurricane will hit. Clarke’s camp says he had initially been given until March 4 — the fourth pool match against Afghanistan — to prove his fitness.
There has either been a major miscommunication or Cricket Australia is setting up its own captain to fail.
How does Clarke return to a successful side? If at all?
He has been a polemic figure inside and outside the dressing-room almost every step of his undulant career. A platoon of former players often ask whether Clarke puts himself ahead of the baggy green.
For a player who has played more than 100 Tests, scored more than 8000 runs, and captained Australia to an unforgettable Ashes victory, you would ideally hope his career finishes in dignity.
From Ferraris to being grabbed by Simon Katich by the throat at the SCG to Bingle-gate to Homework-gate to this latest imbroglio, it seems certain to end as it has always been.
Like an episode of Geordie Shore, probably in tears.
You can read the full piece here.
Any facts to cling on to? No. Move on.
Please don’t compare Michael with KP Such totally different people and personalities. Both brilliant cricketers but that’s where the comparison ends.It will be up to Michael as to whether his career ends in dignity.KP didn’,t have that choice.
Why do I always come through as anonymous.It’s me Julie!!
Unfortunate if true. But this piece is pretty light on the facts.
If Clarke is fit, there’s no way he’s going to pushed out the door.
I don’t think there’s any question of Clarke being pushed out of the Test team. He’s a certainty to skipper the Ashes tour if he’s fit. But the Aussie selectors have certainly painted themselves into a corner over the World Cup. Even if he makes the mooted deadline, he won’t have picked up a bat in anger for 2 months, and it will be a hell of an ask to pitch him straight into a World Cup. What makes it even trickier is, if he does come back, the man he’ll have to replace is the acting captain! George Bailey is in the odd position where he will either captain the side, or, in all probability, not be in it.
My totally uninformed guess is that Rod Marsh will be given the job of quietly telling Clarke that he won’t be a part of the World Cup – and I reckon the odds will be pretty short on Clarke retiring after the Ashes tour.
What is strange in all this is that Clarke does seem to have made a point of going up against Cricket Australia and “the management”. Marsh was explicit about wanting him to play a warmup game in Adelaide prior to the rescheduled first test. Clarke was equally adamant that he was happy to play some grade cricket in Sydney In the event, I don’t think he batted at all despite 2 artificial declarations on the first day of the grade game – and of course, then he tore his hamstring in the test match.
The Katich story referred to in the article has always been officially denied, even while everyone knew that it happened. It happened at the tail end of Ponting’s captaincy, and Katich played a couple more games before he got injured in the Ashes series. By the time he came back, Clarke was captain and Katich never played again, despite scoring a bucketload of Shield runs. The official reason given was that he was too old – Katich fans (and some of the NSW press) maintained it was because he’d tried to throttle the vice captain! Clarke has always been a divisive figure here – not to the extent of KP, but more so I think than many in England would appreciate.
Clarke might well be butting heads with management. That doesn’t mean he’s going to be forced out.
But that aside, this article seems to suggest that Clarke has lost his teammates but offers very little support that. He didn’t attend a BBQ? So what?
Interesting view Kev as you are closer to the action. I always knew there were those sorts of problems with Clarke. I recall a story of Jimmy hitting him with a cricket pad because he was so singularly ungracious in victory. Following that altercation the England team left in some haste I believe.
Ha! Yes. Egged on by Damian Martyn – allegedly :-)
Although to be fair to Clarke, Jimmy is such a grumpy sod that he’s probably picked a few other dressing room fights!
Jimmy is known to be a grumpy sod that’s for sure. Also ‘very difficult’ I understand from Harmy but never heard of him being close to being sacked for it. Managed well!
I strongly suspect that Jimmy Anderson is a thoroughly nasty bit of work, but he maintains a public face of ‘I’m just this shy lad from up North’ that serves him well. And he gets wickets.
It is worth remembering just how good Clarke’s ODI record as a batsman is:
http://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/engine/player/4578.html?class=2;template=results;type=batting
The concern would be that he has only played 17 ODIs in the last two years when the format has undergone something of a revolution. His average in that period has declined to about 37 and there are just the one century and two fifties but it has hardly fallen off a cliff.
Two small points are tucked away in the detail – his record at home is surprisingly weaker than elsewhere and the Saffers are the one team he has struggled against (average of 28).
In England we might say that Clarke is a Marmite sort of person, meaning you love him or hate him. Does Vegemite have the same descriptive function in Australia?
everyone loves vegemite!
Well if you believe in the logic of the KP sacking you must demand immediate removal of Clarke.
Questioning of management, struggling with serious injuries, mid 30s in age so limited shelf life, team mates have turned against him and his lifestyle.
The one thing in Clarkes favour is he is not a South African so can’t be accused of being an uppity foreigner. I wonder if the Australian cricket board have learned the dark arts of leaking to tame joirnalists like the ECB do.
About ECB leaking.
No doubt you have heard of the manner in which Cook was made aware of his World Cup axing. Friends texted him with the news once they had read it on Twitter. This was before ECB officialdom had reached his door. Given that Alistair Cook is their favourite son it seems unlikely that leaking is set ECB management policy. It’s seems more likely that one or more of the staff who are aware of what emerges from the inner sanctum either talk out of turn or cannot be trusted. It was said that the Petersen leaked dossier had suffered tampering. If so, which seems possible given the nonsense that came out of it, they have at least one mischief maker in their midst.
I know this has nothing to do with Michael Clarke but it’s been on my mind since Cook went and your comment gave me the opportunity to mention it.
Jenny, as you well know I am not Cooks biggest fan. However the way he was told or not told about his removal as ODI captain was pathetic. Unfortunately it typifies much of what many of us believe is the idiotic , arrogant and incompetent way the ECB manages things. Apparently they had to wait for Morgan to wake up in Australia to ask him if he wanted the job. This is beyond comical. What if Morgan had woken up and said “thanks but no thanks guys”. Surely they could have kept it secret for 12 hours?
I wrote on this very site last summer when England won the last test match to secure the series that Cook (even though he didn’t know it) had fulfilled his usefulness to the ECB. By winning against India it assured he would stay as captain for next years Ashes, and keep Downton in a job. Another year would pass and KP would be a year older. No wonder the English pro ECB cricket media treated the victory akin to the battle of Waterloo. It saved their bacon.
But it also made Cook more vulnerable because he was now expendible. I have read that he was truly shocked to be sacked. Well he shouldn’t have been. And although there is some sympathy for the way it was handled he obviously was very neivie about how secure his job was.
You are absolutely right about the staggering levels of ECB incompetence and mismanagement.
Find it difficult to go along with your Cook being expendable to the ECB once India had been defeated, viewpoint. I think they very much wanted him to succeed in all formats. If he doesn’t show better form in the Windies I think his place in the Ashes will be very debatable.
Sure Jenny, they wanted him to succeed in the same way they would want any player they picked as captain to succeed. However last summer was a particularly narrow window in which the management needed results, quickly. They had made a very big call to drop one of their best players. And kept Cook who was out of form.
He then lost the first series to Sri Lanka, and went one down against India. They had bet the farm on Cook and he was not delivering with either bat or captaincy. If Cook went, Downton would be very exposed and could also be in the firing line.
The call for KP to return may have been overwhelming. But once England won the series, Cook was safe as Test captain for next year. And so was Downton. And best of all for the ECB it killed off Any chance of a KP return. You forget just how crazy the media went over the victory at Southampton. It. Was as if England had beaten WI 1976 vintage. The coverage was very over the top. But it allowed them to pencil Cook in as captain for next years Ashes, and it shut the book on KP. It even allowed them to keep Cook as ODI captain. Even though many thought he should step aside for the World Cup. However ,even the selectors gave up on him for ODIs after Sri Lanka
It is interesting you say Cooks job could be in doubt if England do badly in the WI. That kind of makes my point. They are much more secure now a year on. They can give the job to Joe Root who is a year older.
Jenny, as with many things from the ECB, Cook’s sacking had been previewed by Nick Hoult of the Telegraph. That’s a proper off the record briefing, not tittle-tattle. It appeared several days before the sacking.
If you look back over Hoult’s reports from the last year, I think it’s very generous indeed to believe they’re anything other than sanctioned briefings.
Mark,
Where do you think Webster got most of his info for that piece on Clarke from?
Kev, I was being a little bit sarcastic.
Nick Hoult in the DT writes, “The cracks in Clarke’s relationship with Lehmann and Cricket Australia were first made public in Zimbabwe in September. The pair fell out over the failure to pick Smith in a one-day international which Australia lost in Harare.
Clarke also wanted Alex Doolan to bat at three in a crucial Test against Pakistan in the UAE but the selector chose Glenn Maxwell instead with disastrous results”.
On the Maxwell selection, Clarke was obviously right. On Smith in Zimbabwe, it is unclear if Clarke wanted Smith in or out of the team – can anyone elaborate? It is a reminder how far Smith has come that he wasn’t being selected as recently as last September.
I remember reading about those selection dilemmas before, I think in the most recent piece by SB Tang on the Guardian site. It was a spinning track and Clarke wanted Smith for his batting against spin. Lehmann didn’t. Result, they came close to losing the match, IIRC.
Thanks Rooto – so basically Clarke was right in both selection disputes?
Another question – why was the BB Final in Canberra? (Not trying to knock the tournament which has been brilliant overall – genuinely curious to know).
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2ffyl2_top-5-unpredictable-and-amazing-catches-of-cricket_sport