The Fat Lady Is Doing Her Scales

Clarke re-defining himself

If Etta James was making the call on the performance of the Australian team at the Gabba, then "At Last" would be her choice of song. 2013 has been long, hard and full of pitfalls for Michael Clarke and his gypsies.

They were flogged in India, despite finding Steve Smith was ready for the game at its longest and highest level. They were well beaten in England, despite playing the better cricket session by session, because when they lost a session it was disastrously. Smith was good again. They lost key bowlers to injury and Ponting and Hussey to retirement - one because he was pushed the other because he feared being pushed. They didn't have Katich, when it was later admitted they should have.

Through it all, they have been chased by the media ... no, that's wrong ... they have been harassed by the media and have had their integrity and ability questioned almost daily whilst on tour. So harsh has the assessment been, that the doomsayers and cheap shot artists in the mainstream media - breakfast show hosts and pretty boys and girls who play at being journalists - have piled ridicule onto their backs as sport and for ratings, in the way these leeches do. They have no expertise and only faux opinions.

Yet in Brisbane, for three days now, Australia have bested England. The batting failed on day one but the allrounders saved them. There has been no respite for Alastair Cook's Englishmen since.

On the third day, they rattled up more than three hundred runs in only 72 overs and then removed two Englishmen in their pursuit of 561, a target beyond improbable.

David Warner and Michael Clarke were superb. They made real Test made hundreds, against the backdrop of crushing their opponent. If the bowlers had been ruthless in their aggressive destruction of a the English batsmen, Clarke and Warner were no less incisive. Things were safe at lunchtime, after Chris Rogers and Shane Watson were removed quickly by an enthusiastic English start. Watson's loss was no improvement on his first innings, this time in a hurry to score after his go slow in the first innings. He played a dreadful hoik straight up in the air from Tremlett to be caught by a jubilant Stuart Broad at mid on. That was the end of it.

Warner - a whole year
removed in a moment

After lunch, Warner and Clarke tore England apart, with shots that went everywhere and just where they aimed them. Clarke had lost the forward press in his batting suite, preferring to go first back and across. Whenever he has played this way, he has been at his most dangerous. Arthur Morris said in a recent interview that the best batsmen were those who played back and across as a first movement and decried the modern insistence of coaches that players make the forward movement as their initial set up position. They scored at a fast rate ... 154 runs being raised in the session, despite both eventually losing their wickets.

It is often said that an emphatic innings by a captain in the first innings of a series establishes authority. Clarke's was such an innings.

Warner, for his part the most maligned Australian cricketer of 2013, played the innings that many thought beyond him. Carrying early season form into the game, his batting in both innings has been mature and he has easily been the best on either side. Settled and happy and well in body and mind, this is the David Warner that purists never believed would surface but they discounted his desire and his love of that green cap. Playing Test cricket has always been his one goal.

Brad Haddin scored his second half century of the game - this one without the class of the first. Johnson and Bailey slogged Australia to 400 and a declaration that was almost overdo.

From the first ball after lunch, Cook had only limited ideas and these were used up quickly. Beyond throwing the ball to Swann so could be massacred or giving Root a bowl, he did nothing anyone else in the team could have done. The Australian took the initiative and he did  nothing about it.

Tremlett was underused but consistently bowled the right line and length. Broad had flattering figures but experienced injuries worries throughout the day - he must have or Cook's use of him was inept. England were desperate enough to let Joe Root bowl 15 overs and Anderson and especially Swann were awful. Swann finished with match figures of 2-215 and both wickets were taken as Australia accelerated away.

Mitchell Johnson and Ryan Harris removed Carberry and Trott in the 15 overs before the close, as Cook took 26 balls to get off the mark. Carberry was a tad unlucky, defending the ball stoutly from Harris and then had the ball bounce between his legs and back onto the top of middle stump. Trott, by comparison, fell willingly into Clarke's trap, lifting the ball on his leg stump to Nathan Lyon at backward square leg.

England look a beaten side. Tomorrow should confirm it.