While he is not by any means untouchable anymore, Michael Clarke is still an aggressive, adaptable batsman, Australia’s best slip fielder, and crucially, their most proactive leader
Daniel Brettig30-Jan-2015Few workplaces share the notions of permanence and transience quite like the Australian cricket team. Tenure can appear endless, as it seemed for Ricky Ponting and Allan Border, before suddenly becoming as tenuous as the swinging vote of a solitary selector. A player can look undroppable, even untouchable, before form or injury intervenes to render them neither. Cricket Australia do hand out multi-year contracts, but they are the property of a favoured few, seldom more than five or six cricketers at any one time.The situation is not dissimilar for support staff, who sit on a range of contract lengths but all share a 30-day termination clause. It’s not much really, particularly given how much one’s life has to be uprooted by the constant travel demands of the job, and how much scrutiny entailed in most roles. Mickey Arthur had a contract until after this year’s World Cup – his sacking and replacement by Darren Lehmann arguably saved the skin of their superior Pat Howard, who can now look forward to a contract renewal sometime this year should he want it.Since his return to the Test team following a year’s absence in November 2006, Michael Clarke has enjoyed near enough to a decade of the aforementioned untouchability. The closest he has ever come to looking like he did not merit his place on a performance basis was actually in 2010-11, the season before he was appointed captain, and there was little chance of Clarke being dropped before getting the chance to succeed Ponting.So the current debate and discussion about Clarke’s future is new territory, not only for him but also for the team and Cricket Australia. Suddenly, the natural order of the past few years has been reversed: Clarke is not sitting in judgment on his fellow players and team staff as either a quasi or official selector. Instead, judgments on his potential value are being made by those around him, whether they be coaches, selectors, administrators or fellow players. All are aware of how ruthless Clarke has been in the past, pursuing victories without fear or favours for others, no matter how loyal or deserving.This overturning of the prevailing climate has done some strange things. Relationships within the team have in some cases evolved in ways unforeseeable on the day Clarke lifted the Ashes urn at the SCG followed the 5-0 sweep of England last January. Alliances once sturdy are now far less so, and younger players who once looked up to Clarke are now taking advice from elsewhere.Several of the key players in this environment have experienced the sensation of being unwanted or unfavoured at other points of their careers. Lehmann was an outsider and outlier for far longer than his relatively recent transformation into the man holding most of the keys to control over the team. Brad Haddin was on the outer ring throughout the summer of 2012-13 after excusing himself from the team for personal reasons in 2012. Shane Watson’s security and certainty was eroded greatly over the previous summer due to injuries that left him vice-captain in name alone, while the two years combined left many wondering whether Mitchell Johnson would ever be back, or whether indeed he needed to be.Suggestions that the team have “moved on” from Clarke are perhaps a tad too strong. He has always had a way of operating not enjoyed by everyone, but its effectiveness – provided the right support from those around him – is largely born out by his results as a batsman and a captain. If anything, team-mates who might once have rankled at Clarke’s ways have in recent times come to accept that he is who he is, and by the same token age has softened a few rough edges when it comes to man management. It was significant to hear Steven Smith say during the UAE tour that he saw relationship management as captaincy’s greatest challenge.
The last thing any supporter of Australian cricket wants is for there to come a time during this year’s Ashes tour when everyone present wonders how useful a Clarke hundred with the bat or brainwave in the field might have been, and is instead left cursing that he is sitting at home on the couch, tweeting
“The toughest part of the job is managing all the players around you,” Smith said, proving himself to be a quick learner. “The on-field stuff, setting fields, changing bowlers, that’s the easy part. It’s making sure all your players are on the same page with what your plans are and what you want from your players and the team. That’s the biggest challenge and what you really need to get right if you want your team to be successful.”What cannot be overstated is the fact that Clarke’s future is up for discussion, and that he has far less say in this debate than he had become used to. Martin Crowe has called it a “strange cooling” by CA towards its captain. The Sydney Morning Herald’s Andrew Webster has written of a “collision course” between captain and selectors. Unusually for him, Shane Warne has remained strangely silent, while nary a single CA figure has stood up to pour cold water on the story.That silence is more than enough to confirm a divergence of views on whether Clarke is in the best team for the World Cup, whether his body is still strong enough to handle the rigours of a Test series, or whether the team in England later this year might be happier without him. The prospect of Smith being named permanent captain, leaving Clarke to fight for his place as a batsman alone, seems less plausible than it was when Ponting stood aside for his successor.Clarke’s position as incumbent captain of the Test and ODI teams does complicate matters a little. Were he merely a player, the question of his retention would be down to the selection panel alone, among whom Lehmann’s vote carries plenty of weight. But as he is also a leader, the Clarke question takes in the oversight of Howard, James Sutherland and the CA board itself, due for a change in chairman later this year when Wally Edwards steps down for David Peever. That is a lot of “stakeholders” to unify into one strong and coherent point of view.Whatever is felt about Clarke’s history of man management, or about his controversial time as a selector, there are two incontrovertible facts that should not be lost. The first is that when fit he is still more than worth his weight in the team as an aggressive, adaptable batsman, the finest slip fielder in the nation, and a quick-thinking and proactive captain. The second is that measuring the gap left by Clarke is difficult to quantify in the comfortable surrounds of a home summer, particularly a Test series against a team so allergic to travel as India. Smith and the team did well enough, but only in favourable circumstances and familiar climes.In the recent past, when it was decided that Haddin was inferior to Matthew Wade, that Johnson should be ranked behind Mitchell Starc as a Test bowler, or that Watson was an optional choice in addition to a four-man bowling attack, these judgments were made hastily and at home. Subsequent events on more challenging assignments overseas proved them wrong. It is hoped this will be a lesson in how CA’s decision makers deliberate on Clarke.The last thing any supporter of Australian cricket wants is for there to come a time during this year’s Ashes tour when everyone present wonders how useful a Clarke hundred with the bat or brainwave in the field might have been, and is instead left cursing that he is sitting at home on the couch, tweeting.
