Jarrod Kimber's Blog, page 10

August 8, 2015

Michael Clarke: greatness and love

A clean skin and a baggy green. That is what Michael Clarke used on his home ground of the SCG as he made a triple century.

It was a perfect cricket image. The young gun who had never been embraced, had struggled to ever make a positive impact, who had been given a failing team, was smashing around India, in the nation’s cap, with a sponsorless bat. Running up those historical SCG stairs, chatting mid innings to the country through Channel Nine, and trying to win over a nation of doubters.

For the first time all those whispers, from current players, former players, the media and the fans, were drowned out by nothing but applause.

That is what Michael Clarke has always wanted, to be not just a player, not just a captain, but a great – a legend, loved and idolised forever. One of the golden baggy green wearers. Trumper. Bradman. Border. Clarke.

Clarke wanted to be the hero riding the white horse. He wanted to be loved, adored, and iconic.

Eight years earlier he did what Australian batsmen for generations before him had never really been able to do, he treated India like his own personal playground. He scored 151, on debut, on the same surfaces that Australia had spent decades treating like kryptonite. Clarke made those men look silly as he danced down to the great Anil Kumble and Australian torturer Harbhajan Singh. When facing Zaheer Khan, as he approached his hundred, Clarke took off his helmet and replaced it with a baggy green. It was another great image.

Former Australian legends had already whispered that he was a once in a generation cricketer. Now we could see it for ourselves. He was called a breath of fresh air, his hair styling became an odd media obsession. And he was the young star of one of the greatest teams of all time.

Clarke stated that he wanted to be one of those players who was never dropped. Don Bradman had been dropped. Ricky Ponting had been dropped. But here was a young kid, stating that he wanted to stay in the team forever. He might as well have said, ‘I don’t want to be a player, I want to be a legend’.

The problem was that after the Bangalore innings, Clarke was like any young player. He had flaws, he had bad days, and teams played on his patience. He also hit the ball in the air a lot. From his third to his eighth Test series, he didn’t make a hundred. The pressure mounted up. People stopped calling him a breath of fresh air, and started using flashy. It seemed like he was getting special treatment that he didn’t warrant. He was seen as a passenger. And while the whispers of him being dropped, and the whispers of those who turned on him got louder, Clarke continued to fight for his place, at press conferences far more than in the middle.

Then there was Michael Clarke’s real battle. Everything had come easy to Clarke. Since the age of 12 everyone had told him he would play for Australia. He was a cricketing Richie Rich. In his first three seasons he was a decent cricketer for New South Wales and hinted at something special, but there were no magical 1000-run seasons. There were no double or triple tons. He never averaged over 50. But with Clarke, it was, and had always been, obvious, he was an Australian player. So he was promoted.

The biggest problem with this was that when he lost form for Australia, he had nothing to compare it to. He’d been a teenage prodigy, a stalwart by 20 for the toughest state in the country, the pearl from the academy and then the young idol in this champion team. He didn’t know how to be the struggling batsman. And he couldn’t dig his way out of it.

His perfect career was dented when he was dropped.

Michael Clarke and Shane Warne pose with the replica of the Ashes trophy after the 2006-07 whitewash © Getty Images

Brad Hodge, Andrew Symonds and Shane Watson all played Tests in this time. Clarke was even brought back for Bangladesh, and then redropped. But when Watson’s body ruled him out of the 2006-07 Ashes, Clarke came back in. With Australia cruising past a non-existent England, Clarke strode out and did what he does at his absolute best – score pretty runs. So pretty, and plentiful, that he was never dropped again.

Clarke in form is liquid batting. He has these long luscious drives. He has time, and magic feet. There is no where he can’t score, no type of bowler that can stop him. Like a hybrid of Mark Waugh’s timing and Michael Slater’s feet. He was even compared to Neil Harvey, the original golden footed youngster. It was all so pretty, but the whispers were still there.

Runs aren’t enough when you want to be a legend. You have to make special runs. Steve Waugh crisis runs. Ricky Ponting stamp-of-authority runs. Allan Border one-man-army runs. Clarke merely scored runs. Not big runs. Not attention grabbing runs. Not clutch runs. For any other player, it would have been enough. But he didn’t want to be just another player, and the fans now wanted more from him. They demanded he become the legend they, and he wanted. Instead he was ethereal, floating around world cricket never making any real impact at all.

As Australia moved on from a champion team to a mediocre one, Clarke was much the same. His average was in the mid-40s. He developed a weird habit of being dismissed just before a break. The whole team was struggling, the system itself was buckling, but Clarke took the full brunt of the hate. The desperation. The anger.

The whispers about his image as a Bondi-brunching bikini-babe dating wannabe model were now constant screams. He posed in underwear, he liked expensive cars and wore the latest fashions while Australia plodded around international cricket. People acted as if he did all that and didn’t work on his game. As if the two couldn’t go together. He was a young, rich, good-looking Australian who was moving his way up from working class to a Sydney mover and shaker. He was a slick publicity machine. And people despised him for it. There has always been a battle in Australia between working class, and those from the working class who aspire for more.

The great Australian dream is to own your own home. Not to be rich. Not to be famous. Do your job as well as you can, don’t showboat, keep your head down, and have a cold beer at the end of the day. Michael Clarke, by no fault of his own, wanted more. While Shane Warne ate Hawaiian pizzas and smoked durries, Clarke sipped cocktails and ate at hotspots.

Australia, the sort of Australia that boos Indigenous football legend Adam Goodes, couldn’t handle that.

Clarke became vice-captain, and captain in waiting, but no one in the country seemed to like him. The more he did to try and get the public’s love, the more they hated him. His high profile girlfriend, glamour model Lara Bingle, was an Australian Kim Kardashian. And their public displays of affection, including nauseating conversations on Twitter, grated. They clearly wanted to be an ‘it couple’. They were clearly in love, and Clarke was willing to miss a Test when Bingle’s father passed away. But even that was used against him. A real man, apparently, is one who leaves his partner alone as she mourns her father’s loss.

Much in the same way, a Prime Minister’s spouse is important, so was Bingle. She wasn’t seen as the right kind of future Mrs Australian Cricket captain. Few seemed to notice that the best run of his career at the point was when he was with Bingle.

But their paparazzi-friendly romance was not destined to last forever. Bingle’s past caught up with her when nude pictures of her found their way into the public, and Clarke decided to move on. The only problem was that Australia was in the middle of a tour of New Zealand. Clarke left the tour to break up with her. He then went back to New Zealand and made a quality hundred. Had any other player scored a hundred after a break-up mid tour, they would have got praise. But had any other player broken up mid tour, no one would have known. His life was a series of public whispers in gossip pages. He got grief for leaving the tour, he got grief for breaking up with Bingle, and he got faint praise for one of the most important hundreds of his career.

He wasn’t good enough, he wasn’t hard enough, he wasn’t humble enough, he wasn’t working class enough, he wasn’t what they wanted. And deep down, he wasn’t what he wanted, as he wanted to be loved. He was averaging 50 in Test cricket. That did not get him love. The love he craved, the love he thought he deserved.

Then there was the altercation with Simon Katich. It didn’t matter about facts. Or the truth. Or what had brought it all about. Katich had choked Clarke in the dressing room because Clarke wanted the Australian cricket war song sung earlier. Forget whispers, this was the only fact anyone wanted to say: Katich was a man, Clarke was soft. One worried about manly traditions, one worried about dinner reservations and VIP rooms.

Those outside the Australian team were spreading rumours of how unliked he was. Even a Cricket Australia blog from Brett Geeves mocked him. The other players whispered about how he had no real friends, hung out with his bat sponsor, and was Shane Warne’s pet.

By the Ashes in 2010-11 his batting was in a funk, his average dipping back to the mid-40s. His back was now slowing him down, making him an occasional target. As vice-captain, and captain in waiting, of an Australian team losing their first home Ashes in 24 years, he was barely seen. At the crease, or at press conferences. His all-time low coming when at Adelaide in the second innings he showed some form, before letting Kevin Pietersen get him out moments before the close of play. Then not walking when it was obvious he hit it. Then standing there embarrassed as the DRS made a mockery of not walking. Then apologizing via Twitter for not walking.

At the same time Doug Bollinger was one of the most popular cricketers in Australia. As a player, Bollinger never made it. As a man, he did. He was big, loud and funny. Not often intentionally. Australia embraced his unpolished nature, his natural ockerness. They loved him when he accidentally kissed his beer sponsor, not the Australian crest and when he sang badly on a cricket ad. Clarke, in his whole career, had never been as loved as Doug the rug. A Sydney newspaper ran a poll on who they wanted as the next Australian captain during this time. Clarke got less than 15 percent of the vote. Cameron White got over 40 percent despite not being in the side. Had Bollinger been in the poll, Clarke would have lost to him. Had it been an election, Clarke would not have been the people’s choice.

Clarke was booed in Melbourne in Ricky Ponting’s last game as captain.

When Ponting did step down, it should have been a formality that Clarke took the job. There was no one else even in the line, Clarke was vice-captain, just tick the box. But Cricket Australia board member, and former team-mate, Matthew Hayden, questioned Clarke’s character. He spoke up for the masses. He used Clarke leaving a tour to break up with his girlfriend. He used the Katich incident. He used the fact that Clarke didn’t get along with people. He might as well have talked about his modelling and where he brunched.

But Cricket Australia board member and Clarke ally, Mark Taylor, stood up for him. And Cricket Australia chose their only actual choice.

Clarke, in his first Test as captain, at home, was booed.

The Australian captain, by accident, seems to mirror Australian society at that time. When Border led Australia, he led a country on the move, making a mark, by working as hard as they could. Steve Waugh’s aggressive patriotism and arrogance was the Australia of the late 90s. And Ponting’s skill, frustration and anger at the little things were all there as he and Australia moved from a suburban country to a metropolitan one.

Clarke was also representative of Australia. He was the lucky batsman leading the lucky country. He hadn’t worked as hard as the men before him. He hadn’t got where he was through hard work, but natural resources. He wasn’t content with just a home of his own. He wanted a property portfolio. He was rich, and no longer working class. He may not have been the sort of Australian captain Australia wanted, lusted after, thought they deserved. But he was very much the modern face of Australia. Maybe that mirror was the problem.

Clarke made a hundred in Sri Lanka, as he led his team to win in their first series. In South Africa, at Cape Town, on a pitch that his batsmen could not understand, he came to the wicket at 40 for 3. Many Australian fans would have written him off. Instead he made 151 out of 284. His team bowled South Africa out for 96. All they needed was a decent second innings and the Test was theirs. 47 all out followed. And Clarke lost his chance to win his second series as well. Clarke had made almost 50% of Australia’s runs in the match.

The next Test Australia won and they had drawn away from home against the world’s No. 1 team. A home draw against New Zealand was odd. But then India turned up.

Clarke, the man who had never been loved, embraced or respected, was given the warmest embrace at the SCG as he passed each milestone. It could have been Trumper or Bradman. It was respect. It was an embrace. It was love.

For the next year, Michael Clarke kept feeling the love. He added a double century to his triple century against India. He scored two more the following summer against South Africa. He was now dating his high school sweetheart. He was now writing for the paper that had slagged him off.

And the Sydney Morning Herald wrote this: “Dear Pup, on behalf of the Australian sports media and cricket fans across this sunburnt nation, it’s time to officially say sorry. These aren’t token words. A journalist finds it almost as hard to utter the “s” word as John Howard did.” And then ended with: “It’s not your fault you like to wear the latest cool duds and like a good time away from the field. Your results with the cricket bat, and the decisions you make as our leader, are the only two credentials you need worry about. On both counts, you’re passing with flying colours, and that’s all that matters. You’ve started your new life with your lovely new wife, now it’s time we started our relationship with you afresh.”

To get a public apology all Michael Clarke had to do was score 329*, 210, 259* and 230 in one year.

Even then, Clarke would never win everyone over. But this was monumental. Clarke was in charge. Clarke had respect. He had climbed the mountain. He was special. Now, to become a legend.

With Clarke was a whole new team. Mickey Arthur the cheery coach. John Inverarity the scholarly selector. Pat Howard the executive general manager to team performance. And Michael Clarke, as selector.

Those good times lasted only as long as Australia were in Australia. Overseas, Clarke has never had long lasting good times. His career average away from home is under 40. It is over 20 less than his average at home.

A clean skin and a baggy green. That is what Michael Clarke used on his home ground of the SCG as he made a triple century.

It was a perfect cricket image. The young gun who had never been embraced, had struggled to ever make a positive impact, who had been given a failing team, was smashing around India, in the nation’s cap, with a sponsorless bat. Running up those historical SCG stairs, chatting mid innings to the country through Channel Nine, and trying to win over a nation of doubters.

For the first time all those whispers, from current players, former players, the media and the fans, were drowned out by nothing but applause.

That is what Michael Clarke has always wanted, to be not just a player, not just a captain, but a great – a legend, loved and idolised forever. One of the golden baggy green wearers. Trumper. Bradman. Border. Clarke.

Clarke wanted to be the hero riding the white horse. He wanted to be loved, adored, and iconic.

Eight years earlier he did what Australian batsmen for generations before him had never really been able to do, he treated India like his own personal playground. He scored 151, on debut, on the same surfaces that Australia had spent decades treating like kryptonite. Clarke made those men look silly as he danced down to the great Anil Kumble and Australian torturer Harbhajan Singh. When facing Zaheer Khan, as he approached his hundred, Clarke took off his helmet and replaced it with a baggy green. It was another great image.

Former Australian legends had already whispered that he was a once in a generation cricketer. Now we could see it for ourselves. He was called a breath of fresh air, his hair styling became an odd media obsession. And he was the young star of one of the greatest teams of all time.

Clarke stated that he wanted to be one of those players who was never dropped. Don Bradman had been dropped. Ricky Ponting had been dropped. But here was a young kid, stating that he wanted to stay in the team forever. He might as well have said, ‘I don’t want to be a player, I want to be a legend’.

The problem was that after the Bangalore innings, Clarke was like any young player. He had flaws, he had bad days, and teams played on his patience. He also hit the ball in the air a lot. From his third to his eighth Test series, he didn’t make a hundred. The pressure mounted up. People stopped calling him a breath of fresh air, and started using flashy. It seemed like he was getting special treatment that he didn’t warrant. He was seen as a passenger. And while the whispers of him being dropped, and the whispers of those who turned on him got louder, Clarke continued to fight for his place, at press conferences far more than in the middle.

Then there was Michael Clarke’s real battle. Everything had come easy to Clarke. Since the age of 12 everyone had told him he would play for Australia. He was a cricketing Richie Rich. In his first three seasons he was a decent cricketer for New South Wales and hinted at something special, but there were no magical 1000-run seasons. There were no double or triple tons. He never averaged over 50. But with Clarke, it was, and had always been, obvious, he was an Australian player. So he was promoted.

The biggest problem with this was that when he lost form for Australia, he had nothing to compare it to. He’d been a teenage prodigy, a stalwart by 20 for the toughest state in the country, the pearl from the academy and then the young idol in this champion team. He didn’t know how to be the struggling batsman. And he couldn’t dig his way out of it.

His perfect career was dented when he was dropped.

Michael Clarke and Shane Warne pose with the replica of the Ashes trophy after the 2006-07 whitewash © Getty Images

Much in the same way, a Prime Minister’s spouse is important, so was Bingle. She wasn’t seen as the right kind of future Mrs Australian Cricket captain. Few seemed to notice that the best run of his career at the point was when he was with Bingle.

But their paparazzi-friendly romance was not destined to last forever. Bingle’s past caught up with her when nude pictures of her found their way into the public, and Clarke decided to move on. The only problem was that Australia was in the middle of a tour of New Zealand. Clarke left the tour to break up with her. He then went back to New Zealand and made a quality hundred. Had any other player scored a hundred after a break-up mid tour, they would have got praise. But had any other player broken up mid tour, no one would have known. His life was a series of public whispers in gossip pages. He got grief for leaving the tour, he got grief for breaking up with Bingle, and he got faint praise for one of the most important hundreds of his career.

He wasn’t good enough, he wasn’t hard enough, he wasn’t humble enough, he wasn’t working class enough, he wasn’t what they wanted. And deep down, he wasn’t what he wanted, as he wanted to be loved. He was averaging 50 in Test cricket. That did not get him love. The love he craved, the love he thought he deserved.

Then there was the altercation with Simon Katich. It didn’t matter about facts. Or the truth. Or what had brought it all about. Katich had choked Clarke in the dressing room because Clarke wanted the Australian cricket war song sung earlier. Forget whispers, this was the only fact anyone wanted to say: Katich was a man, Clarke was soft. One worried about manly traditions, one worried about dinner reservations and VIP rooms.

Those outside the Australian team were spreading rumours of how unliked he was. Even a Cricket Australia blog from Brett Geeves mocked him. The other players whispered about how he had no real friends, hung out with his bat sponsor, and was Shane Warne’s pet.

By the Ashes in 2010-11 his batting was in a funk, his average dipping back to the mid-40s. His back was now slowing him down, making him an occasional target. As vice-captain, and captain in waiting, of an Australian team losing their first home Ashes in 24 years, he was barely seen. At the crease, or at press conferences. His all-time low coming when at Adelaide in the second innings he showed some form, before letting Kevin Pietersen get him out moments before the close of play. Then not walking when it was obvious he hit it. Then standing there embarrassed as the DRS made a mockery of not walking. Then apologizing via Twitter for not walking.

At the same time Doug Bollinger was one of the most popular cricketers in Australia. As a player, Bollinger never made it. As a man, he did. He was big, loud and funny. Not often intentionally. Australia embraced his unpolished nature, his natural ockerness. They loved him when he accidentally kissed his beer sponsor, not the Australian crest and when he sang badly on a cricket ad. Clarke, in his whole career, had never been as loved as Doug the rug. A Sydney newspaper ran a poll on who they wanted as the next Australian captain during this time. Clarke got less than 15 percent of the vote. Cameron White got over 40 percent despite not being in the side. Had Bollinger been in the poll, Clarke would have lost to him. Had it been an election, Clarke would not have been the people’s choice.

Clarke was booed in Melbourne in Ricky Ponting’s last game as captain.

When Ponting did step down, it should have been a formality that Clarke took the job. There was no one else even in the line, Clarke was vice-captain, just tick the box. But Cricket Australia board member, and former team-mate, Matthew Hayden, questioned Clarke’s character. He spoke up for the masses. He used Clarke leaving a tour to break up with his girlfriend. He used the Katich incident. He used the fact that Clarke didn’t get along with people. He might as well have talked about his modelling and where he brunched.

But Cricket Australia board member and Clarke ally, Mark Taylor, stood up for him. And Cricket Australia chose their only actual choice.

Clarke, in his first Test as captain, at home, was booed.

The Australian captain, by accident, seems to mirror Australian society at that time. When Border led Australia, he led a country on the move, making a mark, by working as hard as they could. Steve Waugh’s aggressive patriotism and arrogance was the Australia of the late 90s. And Ponting’s skill, frustration and anger at the little things were all there as he and Australia moved from a suburban country to a metropolitan one.

Clarke was also representative of Australia. He was the lucky batsman leading the lucky country. He hadn’t worked as hard as the men before him. He hadn’t got where he was through hard work, but natural resources. He wasn’t content with just a home of his own. He wanted a property portfolio. He was rich, and no longer working class. He may not have been the sort of Australian captain Australia wanted, lusted after, thought they deserved. But he was very much the modern face of Australia. Maybe that mirror was the problem.

Clarke made a hundred in Sri Lanka, as he led his team to win in their first series. In South Africa, at Cape Town, on a pitch that his batsmen could not understand, he came to the wicket at 40 for 3. Many Australian fans would have written him off. Instead he made 151 out of 284. His team bowled South Africa out for 96. All they needed was a decent second innings and the Test was theirs. 47 all out followed. And Clarke lost his chance to win his second series as well. Clarke had made almost 50% of Australia’s runs in the match.

The next Test Australia won and they had drawn away from home against the world’s No. 1 team. A home draw against New Zealand was odd. But then India turned up.

Clarke, the man who had never been loved, embraced or respected, was given the warmest embrace at the SCG as he passed each milestone. It could have been Trumper or Bradman. It was respect. It was an embrace. It was love.

For the next year, Michael Clarke kept feeling the love. He added a double century to his triple century against India. He scored two more the following summer against South Africa. He was now dating his high school sweetheart. He was now writing for the paper that had slagged him off.

And the Sydney Morning Herald wrote this: “Dear Pup, on behalf of the Australian sports media and cricket fans across this sunburnt nation, it’s time to officially say sorry. These aren’t token words. A journalist finds it almost as hard to utter the “s” word as John Howard did.” And then ended with: “It’s not your fault you like to wear the latest cool duds and like a good time away from the field. Your results with the cricket bat, and the decisions you make as our leader, are the only two credentials you need worry about. On both counts, you’re passing with flying colours, and that’s all that matters. You’ve started your new life with your lovely new wife, now it’s time we started our relationship with you afresh.”

To get a public apology all Michael Clarke had to do was score 329*, 210, 259* and 230 in one year.

Even then, Clarke would never win everyone over. But this was monumental. Clarke was in charge. Clarke had respect. He had climbed the mountain. He was special. Now, to become a legend.

With Clarke was a whole new team. Mickey Arthur the cheery coach. John Inverarity the scholarly selector. Pat Howard the executive general manager to team performance. And Michael Clarke, as selector.

Those good times lasted only as long as Australia were in Australia. Overseas, Clarke has never had long lasting good times. His career average away from home is under 40. It is over 20 less than his average at home.

Photo by: Jarrod Kimber is a writer for ESPNcricinfo. @ajarrodkimber

Michael Clarke led Australia to another whitewash in 2013-14 © Getty Images

Clarke’s horror started in India as Australia collapsed in every single way imaginable to a 4-0 loss. Clarke didn’t even finish the last Test. Australia’s new feel-good times came crashing down as Clarke and Arthur cracked down on ill-discipline with Mitchell Johnson and Shane Watson about homework. He was trying to flex his muscle as a leader, and stamp his authority on a team he very much saw as his. And instead, he, although mostly Arthur, were mocked for making Australian cricket perform school tasks.

By the time of the 2013 Champions Trophy, things got worse. When David Warner swung a punch at Joe Root in Birmingham, Australian cricket fell apart. Clarke stayed in London getting treatment on his back, and only left London for a charity game involving Warne. His team needed him, his coach was on the way out, and he didn’t take the 90 minute train to sort any of it out.

Darren Lehmann was brought in to settle everyone down. Brad Haddin was back for a bit of leadership as well. It wasn’t a great sign for Clarke’s leadership. Arthur was off saying that Clarke had referred to Watson as a cancer. Australia were losing 3-0. They were 0-7 in their last two tours.

Then England toured Australia. And Mitchell Johnson was back. Haddin had the series of his life. Ryan Harris’ knees squeezed out gold. And Clarke added a 5-0 to his resume.

That 5-0 is as iconic as the unbeaten 329.

South Africa were up next, and it was in Cape Town that Clarke did his best work. Australia were 1-1 in their three-Test series. Australia won the toss and batted. The Australia batsmen had failed twice in the previous match, only Warner had looked comfortable. And Morne Morkel was fired up.

In the 41st over Morkel started bowling short to Clarke. That over, he hit Clarke in the ribs. In the 43rd over he hit him on the arm. The 45th over he hit him on the head, hand and in the gut. The hit on the arm, broke Clarke’s arm. That was an hour into Clarke’s innings. In all, with that broken arm, Clarke made an unbeaten 161, in 430 minutes. Well over 300 of them with that break. He carried a tired team to a Test win, a series win, and they beat the world’s No. 1 team to take that crown themselves.

There was no packed home crowd, no iconic clean skin bats, or baggy green, it was just surviving a monster, playing with the pain and making his team the best on earth.

The loss to Pakistan that followed was disappointing, but it was still barely a blip. Yet, when he got back to Australia, there were whispers. This time from within Cricket Australia that all was not rosy. A hamstring injury had slowed down Clarke, and there were further whispers that Clarke was getting too big for his boots. All those whispers shut down completely when Phillip Hughes passed away.

If Clarke wasn’t the nation’s captain before that day, he was on it. When he stood to give the eulogy, it was an important moment. Then he went out to bat in Adelaide, to lead. He, like many of his team-mates, used it as a public tribute to his mate. But then his back gave out. It wasn’t as brutal as a broken arm, he didn’t have to leave the tour like he did when he was to break up with Lara Bingle, but he had to leave the field. And then he came back on and became the first Australian captain to score a hundred after retiring hurt. He did it with a battered back, a battling technique and a broken heart. When he made the 100th run, he didn’t jump around, he didn’t have the energy, the body or the heart for it. His hundred was battling physical limits and emotional realities.

It was a legendary hundred, a great hundred. Iconic. After it he was so drained he said he may not play again.

Instead he commentated, after retweeting a tweet from a fan suggesting he should join Channel Nine, he joined Channel Nine. Some of his team-mates were not happy with his position of judging them on air. The whispers started again.

This was a man who had made a hundred with a broken arm, made a hundred with a broken heart, won an Ashes 5-0, yet still couldn’t silence them. With the hamstring injury from Adelaide still a problem, and Steven Smith anointed, and ready, as his successor. Some started to question his place in the ODI team.

Clarke worked hard, as Warne tried to sway public opinion for him. And Clarke would play in the World Cup. On the eve of the final he would announce his retirement so that the occasion would not be about him. It became all about him for that very reason. Australia won the World Cup, Clarke was given a standing ovation at the same MCG that had viciously booed him the last match before he became Test captain.

Michael Clarke stood in that vicious coliseum a conquering hero. He had conquered the world, and the ground that mocked him. It was another of those perfect images.

When Clarke married in 2012 he released the perfect image via Twitter. It was his wife in a beautiful extravagant wedding dress smiling down from her white horse at her dream man who is staring back at her. It was just another perfect Michael Clarke image.

There have been times in Clarke’s history when he rode that white horse. When what he accomplished could only be called great, legendary or iconic. There are many others when he has walked beside it.

When Michael Clarke walked off the ground for the final time at Trent Bridge, he never looked up, and there was no applause for him. There was too much English celebration to hear the whispers. But Clarke heard them anyway.

No matter how hard he tried, how perfect he thought he was, how much control he had, he was never in control of his image. There will be those who call him a great. There will be whispers.

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Published on August 08, 2015 16:55

#PoliteEnquiries Stokes is Botham edition

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Published on August 08, 2015 01:23

August 7, 2015

#PoliteEnquiries Introspection, not inspection

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Published on August 07, 2015 01:40

Australia’s 93 minutes of gornography

Photo by: Jarrod Kimber is a writer for ESPNcricinfo. @ajarrodkimber

It was a haunted house. A derelict mental institution. An ancient tomb. An abandoned playground. A castle on a stormy night. There were bats. Monsters. Zombies. Flesh-eating slugs. There was a handprint of blood on the mirror. A hoofprint near the bed. Something dark in the corner.

They ran up the stairs. They ran into the woods. They tripped. They batted first.

That’s if it can be called batting, batting is an endeavour that takes time, that requires hand-eye coordination, control, reflexes and patience. It can be done for days. When done properly, it often feels like weeks.

Australia didn’t last a session. Sorry. Australia didn’t last a slightly shortened session. Australia didn’t bat. They slashed their Ashes away in a 93-minute video nasty.

There is always a monster, a force or a reason for death in a horror film. But the victims are often the cause of their own demise. Look in the back seat, don’t go into that cabin in the woods, and don’t hitchhike.

Batting is taking on a monster by making a series of important decisions based on all the available information in front of you. You read the bowler, the pitch, the conditions and the ball. And then you make what you hope is the correct split-second decision. That’s batting.

That’s not what Australia did.

That’s not even what it looked like they attempted to do. They didn’t read that Stuart Broad was pitching up, or that he was bowling outside off. They didn’t realise the pitch needed late play and soft hands. They didn’t adjust or play for the swinging conditions. And they played the wrong shots to the wrong balls. Every time.

Even to the balls they didn’t get dismissed on (which was roughly seven) there were one-handed back-foot cover drives, nonsensical wafts, fidgety pulls, sliced drives and noncommittal crease-bound hard-handed prods of nothingness. It wasn’t batting; it wasn’t even a semi-decent imitation of batting. It was self-immolation with bats.

The first batsman to leave the ball well was Mitchell Johnson, their number eight. The worst leaver of a cricket ball in international cricket. A man who in the last Test left a ball that he thought was missing off stump, and it ended up hitting his pads outside leg stump. That was the first person who left the ball well. Or often, or virtually at all.

Had the rest not played any shots, at all, it’s hard to believe they would have made less than 60. Had they not taken their bats out, come to the ground, got on the plane in the first place, they could have beaten 60. Had Cricket Australia taken a last-minute choice to replace the entire team with plush toy platypuses, they still could have scored 60. And probably almost made it to lunch.

Anyone with an Australia passport in the ground had this defeated painful face. Every couple of minutes, when the latest moment of idiocy led to the next occasion of calamity, that face. That combination of disbelief, not at the ineptitude, but at the magnitude of the ineptitude. This was their grand final, and it wasn’t grand, it was gratuitous.

They didn’t lose the Ashes, they murdered them. They hacked them into tiny little pieces. They then dipped those pieces into poison, and force fed them into the shocked, gaping mouths of the next batsman. They were fast-moving zombies who were eating each other. Intent on their own destruction, as quickly as possible.

It was gornography, a hardcore slasher grindhouse bloodfest. Ninety-three minutes of humiliating decisions and self-harm pretending to be an Ashes innings. They might as well have just walked the ball over to slips rapped in a gold bow. They should have offered to carry Broad into the crease, sing him a lullaby, buy him a boat and then placed each one of their heads on a platter made of gold. He was as brilliant as they were terrible, but they were terrible.

They tied themselves to the train tracks. They started the chainsaw. They handed Broad the rusty knife and handcuffed themselves to a radiator.

The only good news is that it was over so quick: 111 balls, 93 minutes, 60 runs. Of horror. Of misery.

But even once it was over, Sky kept showing the slow motion of Michael Clarke in pain. It was the same look as every other Australia batsman had already shown. This time it was just slowed down for effect, repeated for torture and will be etched into his Ashes tombstone. The whole shot was behind the dressing room glass, he looked ghostly. He was ghostly.

Clarke is the ghost in the haunted house who looks out the window reliving the gory final moments of their life. Haunting and haunted.

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Published on August 07, 2015 00:30

July 31, 2015

The Ashes demons

Australia had lost five wickets. They hadn’t crossed a hundred. In both innings. Australia’s biggest demon was back again.

The man who usually strode out was this little nugget of Australian. A hero to his team-mates. A villain to the opposition. A man who chews gum and abuses the opposition in the finest tradition of masculine Australian cricket. A man who once claimed a bowled when his hands took off the bails. A man who once saved Australia four out of five Tests in one Ashes. A World Cup winner. An Ashes winner. A member of the world’s No. 1 Test team. Their vice-captain. Their team man. The gravel in their gut, the spit in their eye. Brad Haddin.

But instead came out a little known man. Many called him Phil. They used a superfluous ‘e’ when writing down his surname. He barely has a Wikipedia page, and it’s full of Brad Haddin mentions. If it was properly updated, it would have been even more.

Peter Nevill made his debut at Lord’s, in an Ashes Test, with Australia 1-0 down after coming in as favourites. Then, his second Test came as Australia A selected a younger wicketkeeper with two Test centuries to his name, and amid calls from Ricky Ponting, Shane Warne and Ian Healy for him not to be in the side.

The Australian website Mamamia said Nevill was in the side at Edgbaston because “an Australian legend has been fired for being a good father.” That kind of ignores the fact that Haddin has not been dropped because he left the team to tend to his family, he had been dropped because he had made one fifty since winning Australia the Ashes 18 months ago. And maybe even because he had dropped Root at Cardiff.

But when Nevill batted on the third and final morning of the Edgbaston Test, all that was going on behind him, whispers at his back, in front of him was a giant Steven Finn and a tiny Australian lead.

It could have been Mark Wood. Wood had shown enthusiasm, freshness and raw pace in his Tests this summer. His 14 wickets have come at 39, but often he has made an English attack look more potent, even when not getting the wickets himself. But Wood was overbowled, and his ankle couldn’t stand up. They had always said that might happen.

With two allrounders, that makes the third bowling position even more important.

Moeen Ali has been attacked badly and then milked well. After playing a huge part with the ball at Cardiff, he is still taking his eight wickets this series at 45. He has the spin, but not always the control. As Nathan Lyon looks more and more like a Test bowler, even willing to stare down David Warner for over 10 seconds for a fielding error, Mooen still looks like he is learning, and that he doesn’t quite believe yet.

But his biggest problem isn’t belief; it’s pressure, maintaining it. He can’t maintain pressure for long enough to be a frontline bowler. But with the bat, at No. 8, twice he has played innings that have sapped and ruined Australia’s chances. Higher up the order he had struggled, and he still doesn’t always seem to know how to bat at No. 8, but his two fifties are very important. If Moeen makes runs, doesn’t make runs, takes wickets, doesn’t take wickets, someone will say he isn’t good enough.

There were many who thought this would be Ben Stokes’ Ashes, at the moment he has as many fifties as he does wickets. But when Stokes makes an impact, everyone feels it. His fifty at Cardiff was like a series of punches; his fifty at Lord’s was the only time England looked like a quality Test team.

When Josh Hazlewood and Mitchell Starc had put on 28, there were English nerves just starting to twitch when Stokes came on. Stokes is not yet a consistent Test match performer. He averages less than 40 with the bat, more than 40 with the ball. But, he has moments. When things aren’t going well for England, it always feels like he could change that. When he took Hazlewood’s wicket, it was one of those moments. Without James Anderson, with Finn and Stuart Broad overbowled, Stokes had to do something.

Stokes bowled as quickly as he could, threw himself through the crease and took the edge of Hazlewood. Then he hit Lyon’s pads for two huge shouts and threw himself into the appeals. Later a drive is clocked back at him, he throws himself at that. He is throwing himself at this Ashes. Mitchell Marsh is the same player slightly earlier in his career. Both can change games through sheer force of personality, both have had troubled off-field beginnings, that they are trying to put behind them as they play in Test cricket while they are still developing their game.

Either could end as legends or punchlines. Test allrounders, sadly, seem to only have those two options in cricket mythology.

The man that Marsh replaced is destined to remain in the second bracket, despite having all the skills required to be in the first. Shane Watson was often a tragi-comic player, and now out of the team, it’s more tragic. How could someone so naturally gifted be a batsman who couldn’t make big scores and a bowler who barely bowled? How could he end up so derided, so unliked, so humiliated? So out of an important series. Is that it, has Watto walked that sad trudge off the field for the last time? That’s what they say.

And is he even the only one. Ryan Harris never even made it out on the field. Haddin might never play again. And Michael Clarke.

There seems to be more talk about whether he will retain his place than his stats suggest there should be. With Clarke, there has always been more talk. Since the Ashes he has made two magnificent Test hundreds, one with a broken arm, one with a broken heart. They are also his only two scores over 50 since he last won the Ashes. The whisper mill has it that the team is not happy, that Cricket Australia is not happy, that there is something amiss with Clarke’s leadership. This talk occurred before, during and after their World Cup win. Then there is his back, which has hounded him as much as Australian public opinion, and now seems to have now changed his actual technique.

And that drop. Clarke is a brilliant fielder. That drop of Ian Bell might not have cost the match. Or the Ashes. It does make the rumoured divisions louder, it makes his form seem worse, and it all adds to the normal pressure of being 2-1 down in an Ashes you were favoured to win.

Alastair Cook was once a 50-50 chance in the slips. Those days are long gone, he has made himself a better catcher the same way he has made himself a better batsman, by refusing not to be. He has done the same with his captaincy. Cook was a lead-from-the-front captain. He made runs, set defensive fields and waited for things to happen. Everyone had an opinion on his captaincy. They always have. Winning in India didn’t change it. Winning an Ashes didn’t change it.

In this series Cook’s only runs have come when England needed them the most, but when they counted the least. But he has led this team. More than he has ever led before. He has spent months under pressure, losing the ODI role, losing a coach, having his friend and former captain back in charge of him, drawing with the “mediocre” West Indies, and then drawing from in front with the New Zealanders. He’s been barely floating in a sea of negativity, and yet now, even with a top four that has for most of this series, been extremely flammable, has a lead.

Cook’s opening partner Adam Lyth made a hundred in his second Test, Edgbaston was his fifth Test, his career average is 22. His second-highest score is 37. His average in the Ashes is 12. He is only 27. He might be dropped. He might be back.

Adam Voges made a hundred in his first Test, and in his fifth he is averaging 40. His top score in this series is 31. In this Ashes he is averaging 14. He might be dropped. He probably won’t ever come back.

Voges has spent his whole career not being the chosen one. Being a fill in. Not being rated. Then he finally had his golden summer. He forced his way into this team without media hype or flashiness, just by being so much better than the other middle-order contenders. Nothing has come easy to him. His international career has been paved with potholes, when paved at all.

But then, this old man, this discarded ODI specialist, strides to the wicket for the first time in whites for his country. The team is in trouble, he bats on, the batsmen all go, he bats on. The tail stay with him, he bats on. And then the tail go out, and he stands unbeaten on 130. A match-winning innings in his first Test.

He has played four Tests since, he has not scored over 37 since. And the worst number is his age, 35. The only number that matters is the 2-1. But at 35, you have less time, Voges knows this every time he walks out to bat, and every time he walks back. His career might finish with a golden duck.

Chris Rogers is the other side of Voges. He came in when Australia was desperate, and now he might be leaving while they still are. He started the tour with an embarrassing ticket scandal and also had some speculating on his place. This was because he had missed the Tests in the West Indies after being hit in the head. With Shaun Marsh making runs, and in form, suddenly Rogers was barely holding onto his place. All this while in the middle of a world record run of scores over 50. So Rogers did what he has always done, went about making runs any way he had too.

Rogers, 37 and 334 days, of Australia, Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Middlesex, Northamptonshire, Victoria and Western Australia, is the leading run scorer in this Ashes. The same Chris Rogers who thought the Lord’s pavilion was moving, who sat mid-pitch staring into a void none of us could see. Who retired hurt on the verge of another half-century. Who almost missed this Test because of his inner ear. Who will, in two Tests time, be entering a permanent Test cricket void, while in the greatest form of his life. His long life. His 24,365 first-class runs life.

Ian Bell’s form seems to rage between effortless grace, style and time, and looking back at the pitch in a confused mess, trying to work out how it all went wrong, again. His fifty at Cardiff was important, his fifty at the end of Edgbaston iced the game. At times his 33 years of age have been discussed like he is 43, has a limp, and hands made of cheese. At his best he can drive Starc down the ground like the world was invented just so that can exist. Then he can slap through point like he’s painting the world’s prettiest picture. And then he can play an angled shot straight to second slip. As England won at Edgbaston, he rested on his bat handle as Joe Root hit the winning runs. He could have been just as easily in a corporate suit watching on.

Beautiful and frustrating, like a significant other that is too damn sexy to give up, and too damn infuriating to stay with. They will be talking about his beauty, and his failures, until they stop talking.

Starc is much the same. There is so much upside. If you close your eyes and think of Starc you see hooping inswingers smacking into stumps. If you open them you see him failing to maintain line or length. The difference between his best and worst is as wide as some of his deliveries. There is a world beating force of nature in ODIs, and there is a lost guy trying to work out how to bowl consistently in Tests.

If he wants a role model, Mitchell Johnson is right there. Johnson has travelled every road Test cricket can offer. He’s lost a Test, at the WACA, with Shaun Tait and Brett Lee beside him. He’s burned through South Africa as much as any modern bowler, and he’s trashed the Ashes, for good and bad.

Few cricketers make as many demons as Mitchell Johnson. Few cricketers have as many demons as Mitchell Johnson. At Cardiff the demon whispered in his ear. At Lord’s he became a demon. At Edgbaston the demons howled at him.

Can he do this in England? Can he handle their mouth? Can he handle their pressure?

At one stage he fumbled a simple single, and he jumped back to get the ball and flung it back in with panic. He was worried about letting through a run, but he look terrified of giving the crowd more to abuse him for. When he came on, that was all they needed.

By the time his last over was in full flow, and he was trying to get a wicket caught at leg slip, the Hollies stand was at full growl. There was no holding back, they had already stood up, as they were, in their words, 2-1 up. They had already sung the Mitchell Johnson is s***e song. They had already chanted Mitchell, Mitchell. Johnson’s second last ball was a low full toss outside off stump. It was a horrible ball. No one in the crowd didn’t remind him of it.

The crowd was at full bark. Johnson abandoned the next ball as he got to the crease. When he delivered the next ball, among the hooting and hollering, he did it from next to the umpire and well behind the crease. Perhaps he thought it was funny, or a prank. But the crowd had produced that, whatever it was. The bad demons were 2-1 up in Johnson’s mind. It will be his last competitive ball before Trent Bridge.

Steven Finn went for a while without bowling competitive balls not long ago. On Friday he bowled an hour of them unchanged. Working over Nevill. Looking for that one more wicket. To make up for the wickets he lost. To make up for all the talk about him being finished. To erase the word unselectable from the front of his name.

In Alice Springs, Finn had run in like a man worried the crease might explode had he got there. Now, with run-up kinks and psychological scars, he ran like a man trying to take his sixth wicket, to close Australia down.

Stuart Broad is in the middle of another quality spell of wicketless bowling. James Anderson is off the ground with people guessing whether his side is actually Glenn McGrath’s ankle.

Finn has to take the wicket. If he doesn’t, Australia’s controversial gamble on Nevill might pay off. Finn proved to himself he was ready earlier this season. He proved to the selectors he was ready before this Test. He proved to his captain in the first innings. He proved to the world in the second innings. But, with his leader down, this was his time.

Finn could have bowled one of those occasional hoopers he had produced. He could have got one up off a length as he sometimes does. He could have replicated one of his many unplayable seamers from earlier in the Test. Instead he sprayed one down the leg side.

Nevill could have missed it, he could have glanced it to fine leg, and he could have flicked it for four. Instead, the man who batted like he was validating the faith in him, just found an edge. Perhaps one so fine that he didn’t even feel it.

Finn took his sixth wicket of the innings. Nevill walked off with Australia’s last chance of a defendable lead. Steven Finn left the field with his head held by, the same one he had in his hands so often the last time he was in a Test squad. This time Edgbaston stood for him.

His demons were quiet.

Australia have lost two Tests. They haven’t lost the series. But their demons are whispering.

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Published on July 31, 2015 15:14

#PoliteEnquiries Clarke watch

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Published on July 31, 2015 05:02

July 30, 2015

This is England

We started in Wales. We went to Lord’s. Now we’re in England.

The crowd were chanting before play started. They didn’t need the flag ceremonies and triple national anthems of Cardiff. No one rang a historically significant bell like at Lord’s. And even the PA trying to blast out the parochial Jerusalem couldn’t be heard. This was Birmingham, cheering for their cricketers as they entered the ground.

This was England.

The clouds were low. Genuine honest-to-God middle England summer clouds. The pitch didn’t look CEO brown, or devoid of grass. Even at a glance it looked like a proper English wicket. There was actual rain. It was properly gloomy. It was a proper England winter summer’s day.

The throbbing masses came in from every gate Edgbaston has, and even then they seemed to have to open up more. Almost none of them was dressed in egg-and-bacon ties, they weren’t part of corporate bonding days, they were English cricket fans, and they were loud. They had opinions, and laughs.

The 6000 singing, laughing, drinking, screamers in the Hollies stand were ready before the day started. A stand named after a man who once said: “Best f***ing ball I’ve bowled all season, and they’re clapping him!” as the world stopped to bid farewell to Don Bradman. The stand is well named. They screamed before and after the first ball.

When the first ball was bowled, it just wobbled a bit. Oh, that English wobble. It didn’t hoop, it didn’t veer off the surface dramatically, it just did enough. Chris Rogers missed it. The crowd erupted. It was just a simple play-and-miss. It wasn’t that close but it didn’t matter. It was a ball, moving sideways, beating the bat. Jimmy was back, England was back, English cricket was alive.

Next ball the crowd, and England, exploded. Rogers bunted one wide of mid-on, he took off (sort of) Warner took off (sort of) then Broad took the ball and hit the stumps as Warner dived to save himself. The Hollies stand screamed, the rest of Edgbaston screamed, the team on the ground screamed, it felt like all of England was celebrating the wicket. In the end it was just a single. It shouldn’t have even been referred upstairs. But the noise levels were set.

Edgbaston would scream. England would scream.

They screamed when Warner missed a wobble-seamed ball from Jimmy Anderson. They screamed when the finger went up. They screamed when the big screen showed the ball pitching in line. They screamed when it was hitting in line as well. And when that digital ball was shown to be hitting those digital stumps, they screamed again.

When Smith nibbled at a Finn ball, they screamed. When he went through Clarke, they were at it again. Later, when Finn came back on, they cheered his arrival. When Jimmy was brought back on, the “Jimmy, Jimmy” chant was brought back with him. When Finn bowled a maiden, one that did included balls jagging away from outside edges at serious pace, he got an ovation from the crowd. So did a diving stop. So did everything.

England were so fired up, on and off the field, that when Jimmy Anderson sledged Michael Clarke he didn’t even bother putting his hand over his mouth. No need to be polite here. This is Birmingham. There was nothing polite about the way they went at Clarke. The only thing coarser than the frequent conversations between Broad, Clarke and Anderson was Clarke’s form. And Finn, who had been laughed at, mocked and ignored, didn’t need words when balls would do – just straight, fast and full.

Then it was Jimmy, Jimmy Anderson’s turn. There are whole parts of the Australian population who don’t believe in James Anderson. They think he is overrated. That he goes missing. That his 400 Test wickets are an ode to English mediocrity. But even if you believe all that, no one in the world thinks James Anderson in these conditions is the same James Anderson who went wicketless at Lord’s.

With just a bit of wobble, and a batting order looking uncertain, you get pure liquid Anderson. He has bowled better than today. He’s been more consistent. Swung the ball more. Hit the seam harder. Bowled the ball faster. But today almost everything he did went right – the almost accidental one that came back to Warner, the wide tempter to Marsh, the round-the-wicket line to Johnson, the nipbacker to Lyon, the one that Voges nicked off the toe of his bat, and the one that held its line to take out Nevill’s off stump.

The Australians produced a typical overseas batting collapse that merely provoked more screams, more laughs, more cheers. Chris Rogers played English cricket and survived, the rest seemed confused at being confronted by a ball moving sideways. When they played shots, their shots were poor; when they left the ball, their leaves were poor. What were these foreign conditions? This strange custom? What happened to dry and dull, slow and low, Cardiff and Lord’s?

Australia had one day of England, and they failed it. They first failed it with the bat. But then their bowlers failed with the ball. They obtained the same movement, but they couldn’t keep the ball in those hallowed right areas. Whereas England hadn’t needed a single over of spin, Australia took two of their three wickets with it. One from a freak occurrence, and the other from an Ian Bellism.

By this point, the crowd was entertained, and sufficiently intoxicated, to laugh as Adam Voges’ belly kept Australia in the game.

They also went after Mitchell Johnson. The same Johnson whom their batsmen had played with horror in their eyes a week ago. The same Johnson Mk 13/14. And they weren’t toying with him as at Cardiff, they were mocking his every move. As he moved from fine leg to fine leg, the stereo of jeers went with him. And to show his masculine superiority, he hurled in a throw as hard as he could. The problem was it went over Nevill’s head, and they laughed at him again. He went back at them, and played them the world’s smallest violin.

He did this as England ambled close to a first-day lead despite losing the toss and bowling. He did this after making two errors in the field in almost as many balls. He did this as Australia wasted the same conditions England used.

The crowd screamed, with laughter. It rained. It was dark. They loved it.

The crowd beat Australia. The conditions beat Australia. England beat Australia.