Clarke's Back Tired of The Load

Bill Lawry

With the series lost in India, the potential exists to equal Australia's worst series drubbing in Test cricket. A loss in Dehli over the weekend will equal Bill Lawry's 1970 squad which was thrashed 4-0 by South Africa.

Lawry and his team have some reason to claim excuses given the length of the tour and the living conditions they were subjected to. Third rate hotels, poor hygiene and the juxtaposition of Indian wickets and then straight to the hard and fast tracks in South Africa. It was a bit rich going from Dehli Belly and Bishen Bedi to Mike Proctor and the killing fields of Capetown and Durban. Has there ever been a more ludicrously conceived or executed tour? It started in Mumbai on the 4th of November 1969 and finished in the first week of March 1970.

It wasn't helped by Lawry claiming in his opening press conference in South Africa that Ian Chappell was the best batsman, in all conditions, on all wickets, in the world. Chappelli made 92 runs at 11. Only Johnny Gleeson, Laurie Mayne and Garth McKenzie had worse batting averages for the tour. Four South Africans averaged over fifty: Graeme Pollock and new boy Barry Richards over seventy. They would be Richards only Tests.

By comparison, Clarke and his men will be in India for five weeks, staying in five star hotels, driven in air conditioned transport and with every need catered for and a fair share of their wants. They have a coach for every possible aspect of their game, although a Kip McGrath member will be included to assist with homework,  on future tours. At the slightest sign of trouble, players have been sent back home, with Jackson Bird and now Mitchell Starc flying home to have repairs done. If the modern way is so good, how come it can come so spectacularly undone in such a short time: in this case, four weeks?

In doubt for Dehli

Michael Clarke, in doubt for the fourth Test owing to his ongoing back problems, appears to be a man struggling with his load. For more than twelve months now, he has carried this team, both with his batting and his on field captaincy. Little wonder he is showing signs of collapsing under the load. It was okay when he had seniors like Mike Hussey and to a lesser extent, Ricky Ponting, to rely on to add runs or information into the mix but now he finds himself alone. Despite protestations, there is a distance between himself and his vice captain Shane Watson. Its a gap that can only have widened in light of the homeworkgate affair. Their are no old heads in this side to consult, no player-based management group. Its a team full of rookies, each man hoping to hold his spot for the next game and wary of what they say or write on self-reporting forms.

As a result, Clarke's captaincy is collapsing, buoyed only by off field egg heads with loads of management theories and no Test match playing experience. Management experts perhaps but it does make a difference that Pat Howard was an international in football. Its not the same. With warm ups and breaks in play, Test match cricketers have to be switched on for at least eight hours a day, even more if they are on media calls after stumps. Howard's rugby demands on game day where three hours tops ... for one day, not five. Without that experience, you can't possibly know the demands on the players.

Here lies a crucial difference between Micky Arthur and John Buchanan. Buchanan knew he didn't have the experience base of playing big time cricket, so he used the players experience to structure his programs. He listened when they talked. Arthur gives them pieces of paper and tells them what their experience will be.

The signs of Clarke's collapse are in his physical condition but they are also in his increasing dyspepsia with criticism. Previously a clever media performer who painted self-portraits of M Clarke as a players man, right behind every man jack, in the past few months he has been openly critical of his players, Shane Watson in particular. As a player, there can be no more destabilising influence than having your two senior men at odds.

Changing himself in the batting order in response to pressure from the media and former players and the deserved reward he received after one ball in Mohali, shows a skipper experiencing internal conflict. There were an equal number of ex Test players - not just Australians - who urged him to resist and bat where he was comfortable.

Whilst the team was fighting and at times punching above its weight - the comeback victory in South Africa a week after being rolled for 47 - Clarke has been a happy skipper but some of his miracle workers have either deserted, been injured or suspended. He's receiving the hardest lessons of captaincy, those learned from teachers sick from a bad day yesterday. Clarke and his men have been caned in India, after gloating from a bloated 4-0 thrashing they gave Dhoni's men when they last met, in Australia. India were an old, tired side then, with former greats whose single candle on a birthday cake of runs was just barely burning. Ponting and Hussey were still playing and Australia's fast bowlers weren't being rotated, just wound up and set to kill.

Signs of fatigue

Mental and physical fatigue are showing through the week-old facial growth. His Australian training cap is being pulled lower and lower at press conferences, keeping his jaded eyes hooded. He has always accepted blame for team performances readily but in India, lists of excuses and inflated views of meagre positives are becoming more prevalent. The failure to back his players and find another way to remind the unFab Four of their responsibilities, lacked the vision that was evident early in his captaincy and has torn down some of the respect his blade has created among his young team. Young players look for the hero in the captain and have, instead, found the villain.

The skipper is tired, the team is fractured and each player worried about his place. Results, morale and self-discipline are poor and selections have become knee jerk reactions to players failing to do the impossible.

India is a tough tour. Conditions are better than in 1970 but the shortness of the tour brings its own problems. Four Tests in five weeks is hard work. Turn around time is impossible and once one side gets on a roll, there is no time to take stock and try and reverse the trend. If a bowler gets into your head in the first Test, he'll still be there a few days later as you try and play the second. India have been a streamroller of subtle bowling that has tied the inexperienced Australians in knots and aggressive batting which has plastered all but Peter Siddle and bad boy bubby, James Pattinson.

Solace should be sought from history. Ponting averaged 26 here, Brian Lara 33, Kumar Sangakkara 36 and Graeme Smith 35. Among bowlers, Shane Warne averaged 43 and Brett Lee 61, despite the latter have a recording contract and a Bollywood profile which has made him Bing of Bombay.

There are certain truths which have to be accepted about this tour. India have been too good for the selected Australian side. The batting has been exposed for its inexperience. The stocks in the spin department are thin enough to require serious skin grafts. The fitness programs for fast bowlers don't even begin to be adequate.

You can't buy experience and coach it into players. The current management techniques and the managers themselves need to be critically examined and if performance based assessment is to be used to review their performance - the coach, the high performance manager, the bowling and batting coaches, the team manager, not the players - then Cricket Australia cannot be seriously satisfied with what has transpired in India.

Siddle - the heart and soul

This side isn't hopeless. A few must be discarded, including Phil Hughes, Xavier Doherty, Nathan Lyon and Glen Maxwell and others like Dave Warner and Shane Watson need to be reminded that the Baggy Green isn't a right. Perhaps Watson gets that now but for all the wrong reasons. Persevere with the rest for England. Ed Cowan has been good after a slow start. Steve Smith made the best of his opportunity but he'll snick a lot in English conditions. Build the attack around Pattinson and Siddle, with Jackson Bird as the third seamer and Starc the variation. If we don't have a good spinner, don't play a bad one. If he can tour, retain Brad Haddin because he's the better keeper and his batting is close to being on par with Matt Wade. He's also an experienced hand and Clarke desperately needs one, more than he needs a batsman/keeper.

Offer Mike Hussey a lot of money ...

... and hope England suffer a lot of injuries between now and then.