Real power must be taken
– Godfather 3
Kerry Packer knew about power. In 1977, when he bought the world’s best players, Packer bought out the tradition of cricket. His greed and vision changed the game globally, causing a major revolution in marketing and the way cricket is played. Packer gave to the players like no administration previously. The best cricketers became his disciples. Entrusted with their future and the future of cricket, he improved the game through commercialisation, media saturation and demands of stellar performance.
Packer had the biggest non-playing influence on cricket in the game’s history, providing better coverage, embracing the one-day game and selling out arenas. In 1978, when World Series Cricket was announced, his determination and vision created a split. His success forced the Australian Cricket Board, and boards around the world to abandon their stubborn stance and compromise.
Since Packer annexed cricket, Australia has produced some of the world’s best players. The team has played exciting cricket. There have been years of dominance and years of mediocrity. Watching has been a privilege. Packer, through Channel Nine, changed the mentality of fans.
In the eighties, junior cricket numbers expanded. Every kid wanted to play cricket on Saturday. Some had no talent, it didn’t matter. Mass saturation through the media and success on the field inspired interest. The fans had become Packer’s disciples, too.
Commercialisation is everything for sport. Television sparked mass interest, crowds increased and kids always want to be the hero. Twenty years after Packer’s revolution, Australia was a great side, winning the Ashes in England and embarking on a decade of dominance.
Dominance has limits. Great players retire. In the past three years six senior players have gone, leaving Australia’s captain, Ricky Ponting, with the unenviable task of rebuilding. After losing the Adelaide Test, the Australian team is being written off. The selectors are being criticised for players brought in and those left out. Try as they might, they can’t select the right combination, but they’re trying.
Australia has three Tests to regain the Ashes. A nation is driven by fear of defeat. The great side has been decimated and the new men can’t do the job. It could take several years before Australia settles on a successful combination. By then, Ponting will be retired. For years, Michael Clarke has been anointed as captain in waiting.
The bestowment has become problematic. When Clarke was selected for his debut in 2004, he showed his confidence, saying he never wanted to get dropped. Two years later he was dropped. It was Steve Waugh who said Clarke will captain Australia. Waugh was a great player and captain, an astute judge. He may yet be right.
Clarke polarises the community like a politician, there’s no way he should be captain, a common refrain. Asking why doesn’t always gain an educated answer. People just don’t seem to like him. The lack of respect can’t be based on his ability, he’s a damn good player, averaging 48.33 from 66 Tests, with 14 hundreds and 20 fifties.
The table below shows Clarke’s hundreds and the innings they were scored in:
| Team | First | Second |
| India | 3 | |
| New Zealand | 3 | |
| West Indies | 1 | |
| England | 1 | 3 |
| Pakistan | 1 | |
| Sri Lanka | 1 | |
| South Africa | 1 |
Despite three centuries against New Zealand, Clarke hasn’t feasted exclusively on weaker teams, three hundreds against India and four against England showing class, skill and determination. But he’s in a lean trot. He hasn’t hit a hundred in thirteen innings, passing fifty twice in that time. Across those innings Clarke is averaging 27.38. He’s out of form, collapsing, perhaps, under pressure of expectant captaincy.
Form, though, isn’t easy to attain and maintain. After scoring his second century in his fifth Test, Clarke went eighteen Tests without a hundred, passing fifty just three times in twenty-six innings. He’s been through difficulty before and prevailed.
The dislike for Clarke, current form aside, seems more based on his demeanour and profile, the former beau of a hyped bikini model, a good-looking metrosexual without an ounce of the grunt required to lead Australia.
Clarke doesn’t have an angry face. His nickname, Pup, doesn’t lean toward bluff and blarney. Where men like Ian Chappell, Allan Border and Steve Waugh exuded confidence, determination and bully, Pup exudes cologne and hair product. The tattooed arm hasn’t provided any menace. The perception in the community is Clarke lacks toughness, he’s soft, unable to look and talk mean, as the Australian captain needs to do occasionally. By proxy, some in the community don’t respect him, which is the reason they don’t want him to captain Australia.
Generally, Australia’s captains have been tough men. Ian Chappell was rabid for the contest, arrogant in manner and assessment, scant in appraisal. He brutalised and inspired. No one, under Chappell was ever unsure. Some Australian players were certain Ian Chappell didn’t rate them as cricketers. His brother Greg was more sedate, less likely to deliver an angry speech to fire the team, but as meticulous, tactically wise and driven as Ian. Greg was a better player than his brother, but Ian, by most who played beneath them, is remembered as the better captain.
Kim Hughes was the captain no one wanted. Totally different in manner to the Chappell brothers, he couldn’t deliver when it mattered most and cried when he quit.
Allan Border, seeing what happened to Hughes, didn’t want to be captain. A short man, determined but rarely fierce, Border was almost 30 when he accepted the captaincy under pressure, his tenure thrust upon him rather than wanted. After threatening to resign due to the lack of fight in the Australian side, Border stayed on, taking the remnants of an Australian team wracked by rebel defections, growing into Captain Grumpy, every bit as demanding as Ian Chappell.
In England in 1993, Border screamed at Craig McDermott during a County game, threatening to send the fast bowler home if his attitude didn’t improve. Weeks later, McDermott went home following surgery to repair a twisted bowel. Border, it must be said, had nothing to do with it.
Mark Taylor inherited a good team from Border and made it great. Taylor had the guts to tell Merv Hughes and Warne what to do, no you can’t have that field placing, just shut up and bowl. He dealt with McGrath’s penchant for sledging, reintroduced attack to Test cricket and captained with astute assuredness. During a Test at the MCG against South Africa in 1993, Taylor argued with a spectator during another rain interruption. It was drizzling, the light dim. The spectator wanted to know why Taylor was happy to go off.
‘Do you want to go out there and face Allan Donald,’ Taylor said. After play, he told the media the exchange was bereft of swearing, no four-letter words. ‘There were kids around,’ he said.
Steve Waugh captained Australia with brutal precision, amplifying Taylor’s attacking play, always at the jugular. Under Waugh, Australia played with intense pressure. Waugh sledged when he batted and bowled. He sledged from the slips, mental disintegration, he called it. Nicknamed the Iceman, Waugh squeezed every ounce of savvy from his talent, butting heads with the world’s best cricketers, famously telling Curtly Ambrose to go fuck himself during a Test in the West Indies, and questioning the intelligence of South Africa’s bowlers on the tour in 2001/02.
Under Waugh, Australia racked up an unprecedented sixteen consecutive Test victories. When Ponting succeeded Waugh, the team matched the heroics, racking up sixteen consecutive wins.
From 1998 to 2008, greatness was perpetual, indefatigable, expected. Like Border, Taylor and Waugh, Ponting had access to Warne and McGrath. Subsequently, his record as captain is unsurpassed, 47 Test wins as captain, more than any other skipper in the history of the game.
The team, without Australia’s two most successful bowlers, has faltered. Ponting didn’t choose his era, the era chose him. At 35, he’ll have to rebuild the Aussies like no captain has since Border, and Ponting doesn’t have the time Border had.
Clarke, as the long-nominated incumbent, will inherit a team devoid of Ponting, Michael Hussey and Simon Katich. If Clarke gets the job, there mightn’t be too much to build on.
At the weekend, a story in the Sunday papers suggested Shane Watson was a chance at being appointed captain. The story was pure speculation, which journalists are prone to do, and that is not a criticism. Clarke is out of form, out of favour with the public, and, according to fictional media reports, at odds with his team-mates.
The story quoted Trevor Barsby, who quit as Queensland coach last week. Barsby played a lot of Shield games for Queensland, but was never considered for the Test side. The story seems an aside to his resignation, a journalist asking speculative questions. Barsby seems an unlikely source to comment of the Test side, but he’s qualified because he coached Shane Watson in Queensland.
‘The only way to find out if Shane would be a good Test captain is to throw him in there and see if he sinks or swims,’ Barsby said, showing a good grasp of clichés. ‘We’ve been told for years now that Michael Clarke will succeed Ricky, but I find that an interesting comment.’
Barsby rated Watson’s skills as above the average cricket player, a man with initiative and focus. Those observations are hardly prophetic, any man who plays Test cricket has better than average skills. The challenge, Barsby said, is how Watson would lead. Given his injuries, he’s never had to worry about leadership.
‘I know he has a good cricket brain,’ Barsby said. ‘He could do the job in that regard. So it’s not so much about Shane the cricketer, its Shane Watson as a man manager.’
Man management is everything. Barsby’s words about Watson were pure conjecture, but Clarke should heed the message, it’s not about the individual or skill, being captain is all about management. To manage, one must be tough when necessary, you’re getting taken off if there’s another boundary, or telling journalists it is ridiculous to suggest disharmony in the side, what are you talking about, do you need a headline that bad.
If there is disharmony in the team, Clarke needs to confront the saboteurs, demand answers and find solutions. If Clarke is the prophecy, he needs to impose himself on the team now, lead by example, win or save a game, ensure the Ashes aren’t lost again, take control in the dressing room, front the media, show everyone he wants to be captain.
As the heir apparent, it isn’t enough to drift into the role. Real power must be taken.
When Kerry Packer died, cricket was in better shape than when he annexed the game with the promise of cash. With the exception of Hughes and Graham Yallop, who briefly captained Australia during the Packer split, every captain since Ian Chappell who retired went out leaving the team in better condition than when he started.
Ricky Ponting is in danger of leaving a shambles. Clarke is in danger of picking up that shambles and remoulding it.
He’s got to want to do it. Millions of Australian’s need convincing. The next three Tests could be all the time he has.
Clarke has to pretend he’s a hero, that what he does will make a difference.
