Jarrod Kimber charts Australia’s tempestuous relationship with Michael Clarke and explores what it says about both his country and countrymen. This article was first published in the Spring 2013 issue of Wisden Cricket Quarterly, The Nightwatchman, in both print and e-book formats.
A white horse walks through a picturesque mountain setting. A white horse, the hero’s horse. The wind blows its mane. On its back is the hero’s woman. Beside it, the hero. Michael Clarke stands in the middle of the SCG. His stickerless bat is on the ground. His baggy green is on his head. The scoreboard shows his triple-century. He becomes a hero. Michael Clarke’s relationship with the Australian public has always bothered me. Michael Clarke likes fast cars. As does Shane Warne. Michael Clarke likes famous women. As does Shane Warne. Michael Clarke likes trendy hotspots. As does Shane Warne. Michael Clarke likes his appearance. As does… well, you get it. With Shane Warne it’s seen as part of his charm. Working-class boy having a bit of fun with his money and fame. With Michael Clarke it’s seen as a working-class boy forgetting his roots. Australia can be a weird place. Ian Thorpe got less flak for being a very modern metro man and designing unisex jewellery than Michael Clarke did for liking fast cars. Ian Thorpe is one of the best athletes Australia, or the world, has ever produced. Michael Clarke is a guy whose average was in the 40s for far too long for a man of his talent. Michael Clarke was supposed to be like Thorpe or Warne, the very best at what he did. To propel the myth that the sunburnt country breeds genetically superior athletes. Being average was never an option for Clarke.
• • •
Michael Clarke’s initial selection did not make everyone happy. Those who think that baggy greens are handed out when players receive their New South Wales caps were infuriated. Why was this kid being promoted ahead of the Martin Loves, Brad Hodges and Mike Husseys of this world? But if you’d seen Michael Clarke bat, you got it. Clarke hadn’t knocked the door in like Matthew Hayden or Ricky Ponting; he’d entered the room stylishly like a dandy hero in a silent film. With his first Test in Bangalore, he made all the complainers shut up. A hundred against India in India. On debut. Indian pitches were kryptonite to Aussie batsmen, so how could this kid come from nowhere and smash a hundred? And it wasn’t a polite, menial hundred. Clarke had rock-and-roll feet and a punk spirit. He went at India hard. Even in Australia, where away Test scores can be ignored or missed, Clarke’s runs made an impact. He was young, boyish, cocksure, reckless, talented, and had a nickname that caught on instantly. It seemed like Australia had found their new hero. Yet even after that debut, people seemed intent on kicking the young man. A weird story was written as the team travelled back. It involved the shocking truth that just before the plane started its descent, Clarke cleaned his teeth, did his hair, and readied himself for the media. I can’t believe he was the first player to do his hair before touchdown. I’m sure Mark Waugh’s hair didn’t just magically appear in a Ben Affleck-style bouffant. But other than Waugh getting some stick for being in dandruff ads, his hair was ignored. Of course, this story wasn’t really about Clarke’s hair.
• • •
Clarke had stumbled into a champion team through talent and confidence. His hundred in India, followed by a ton in his first Test in Australia and a scene-stealing effort at Lord’s appeared to have guaranteed him a bright future. It didn’t. Clarke hit the ball in the air. A lot. At catchable height. His drives were reckless. He didn’t like being stopped from scoring. But those problems were minor compared to the main one. His head. Clarke had never known failure. Life had been easy for him. But now he was about to be dropped, and it became his obsession. Without a history of failure, he didn’t know how to react, and instead he became a victim of Australia’s 2005 Ashes loss. He should have been dropped for a long period. He should have been forced to burn down Shield cricket, or county cricket, to live outside the Australian bubble for a while. To discover what he was really made of. Instead a Shane Watson injury brought him back when he’d barely had time to find a meal in the wilderness. Clarke’s luck was always as good as his talent.
• • •
Lara Bingle sounds like a made-up name. She is in fact the Kim Kardashian or Katie Price of Australia. A role model for the young and vacuous. A woman who got her break through her ability to look good in a bikini. She is universally mocked, hated or adored by the public. She has her own reality show, “designs” sunglasses and was once in a tourism ad for Australia wearing a bikini and saying: “Where the bloody hell are ya?” But her fame arrived in earnest when she had an affair with a married Aussie Rules footballer called Brendan Fevola. While Bingle claimed she had no idea that Fevola was married, it started her public profile as a woman of ill repute. Unfairly or not, she was seen as a bikini-model home-wrecker. In her career, that seemed to do more good than harm. To a once-in-a-generation cricketer and future captain whose form is not setting the world on fire, who likes his hair just so and his cars expensive, proximity to a woman like Lara Bingle is not going to endear him to the public. Suddenly he wasn’t a middle-order batsman; he was part of a celebrity couple. For his activities outside cricket, Shane Warne had lost the vice-captaincy, but never the public’s love. Michael Clarke just lost the public’s love. Women’s magazines had pictures of them walking down hip high streets, posing for energy drinks together, wearing designer outfits and in Bondi cafés having brunch. I don’t know where Steve Waugh liked to brunch. It is possible that Steve Waugh didn’t brunch at all. It’s more than possible, in the minds of most Australian fans, that Steve Waugh was the most Australian person ever, and that he’d never even said the word brunch. Steve Waugh was the Australia that Australians wanted. Michael Clarke was very much the new Australia, and Australia didn’t like it.
• • •
The 2006–07 Ashes series was a good time to be a middle-order Australian batsman. Clarke would come in when bowlers had been crushed, and bring up an effortless hundred. He was, to use the modern parlance, reintegrated. When the top order did collapse, so did Clarke. All of his hundreds came in massive totals. It was good batting, and he had his confidence back, but it wasn’t overly important to his team. While the public was focusing only on his off-field life, his batting had changed. In losing some of his natural aggression, he’d become prone to wafting at full balls in a way that slip fielders drool about. But mostly he’d improved. The slashes through the off-side had got fewer. When driving, he either kept the ball on the ground or well over the fielders’ heads. He’d done exactly what he needed to do: he’d evolved as a batsman.
• • •
When Michael Clarke missed a Test against the West Indies because Lara Bingle’s father had died, he still copped flak. People didn’t think his fiancée’s father dying was enough of a reason not to play for Australia. His father, sure, not hers. Had it not been Lara Bingle, Cricket Australia could have just said it was for personal reasons. But Bingle’s life was too public to make that call. It was in this period that no one ever commented about Clarke’s batting.
• • •
When I go back to my hometown, there is one particular ex-girlfriend who loves giving me shit. “How’s it going trying to be famous?” “You living in a mansion now?” and “Did your celebrity friends tell you that?” She always hated that I didn’t want to die where I was born, wanted to write and make films and to see more of the world than you can in the suburbs of Australia. She never hated the fact that I left, or that I might be successful; what she hated was my aspiration. That I wanted more from life than visiting the Epping Plaza on the weekend was, to her, my way of saying her life was of no real value. It is a microcosm of how the Australian public have been with Clarke. Clarke was called a wanker by fans, players and newspapers. Clarke should have been respected. He’s what Aussies love more than anything else, a working-class boy made good. But his problem was that Steve Waugh, Ricky Ponting and Allan Border seemed to have no aspiration. They are still seen as battlers made good. Hard men who are heroes to an Australia that likes to see itself as a hard land. It is, to put it mildly, bullshit. The Australian cricket captain is the Prime Minister Australia wishes it had. Steve Waugh is that man, Michael Clarke is not.
• • •
Andrew Symonds was a man’s man. He liked to fish and hunt. He was, by his own admission, a binge drinker. And he was a player who definitely enjoyed the women and fame that came with being an international cricketer. He may have looked and played like the ultimate cricket athlete, but as a personality he was a throwback to the ’70s and ’80s. Clarke and him were close friends. Very close. Yet it was essentially Clarke who ended Symonds’ career. A home series against Bangladesh is supposed to pass without incident. But when Symonds was sent back to Brisbane mid-tour, something had gone wrong. The final straw was that Symonds went fishing when a team meeting had been scheduled. The meeting was a late addition to the schedule, and Symonds was already out fishing when it was called. It was perhaps even called because of his attitude to Clarke in the first place. Whether Symonds was a man who needed a strong leader like Ponting, or who just didn’t want to take orders from the young guy he used to get pissed with, is hard to tell. His career never truly recovered from being dropped by his friend.
• • •
Clarke broke up with Lara Bingle mid-New Zealand tour. Photos of her in the shower had made their way from the footballer’s phone to the world. It was clear from Twitter that she was having some kind of breakdown, but still loving the publicity. Perhaps Clarke thought that he had to go over and console her but just ended up furious at the circus. Or it’s even possible that the link between the naked photos and his future job ambition was made. Shane Warne had had to shelve his captaincy ambitions when his infidelity became a scrolling story. It’s more likely that the drama of Bingle had just gotten to Clarke. Being part of a celebrity couple is hard. And mid-tour he didn’t need a scandal back home. So he flew to Australia, sorted it, flew back to New Zealand and made a hundred.
• • •
“Don’t know him at all, he only ever talks to his bat sponsor.” “I’ve known him my entire life and I can’t tell you one thing he stands for, he’s just a kidult.” Just a couple of random quotes I have heard from Shield players over the years. In my experience people were almost universally unkind about Clarke, yet few ever had a story about him being unkind to them. At most he would be aloof, arrogant and remarkably un-empathetic. But there was a reason. Clarke, unlike most cricketers, didn’t know what it was like to struggle to the top. He was cricket’s Richie Rich. He had a bat sponsor as a teen, was earmarked at the academies and raced through Shield cricket to play for his country. That’s not how it is for most players. They don’t feel like Clarke is one of them and perhaps, rightly or wrongly, think that he looks down at them. Maybe he did. Michael Jordan was an amazing player but it wasn’t until he learnt that what he could do was special, and that yelling at his teammates for not being able to do the same was fruitless, that he built a great team. Yet, the one player who worked the longest and hardest to make it to the Australian team tells it differently. Talking to The Sledge podcast, Australia’s one-Test wonder, Bryce McGain, had nothing but praise for Clarke. And McGain’s words were backed up with stories. Anyone who saw McGain’s debut would have noticed that Ponting gave up on him early. He saw a bowler that was not up to the job he needed, and he shelved him. It was Clarke who played the role of motivator and counsellor that day. According to McGain: “Clarke genuinely wanted to know about his players, and wanted to know about their family background.” This seems at odds with the years and years of players saying the exact opposite. Clarke was thinking as a leader.
• • •
Australia is a middle-class country in every way. Beer costs a fortune. House prices are obscene. Thanks to a mining boom, the financial crisis that hit the rest of the world bypassed Australia. While the world worried that Europe might collapse and what the Arab Spring might mean, Australian papers were full of talk about how hurtful internet trolls could be. The bastions of Australian working-class life have changed. Aussie Rules football is no longer a brutal racist game, it’s a family-friendly environment. Rugby League had an openly gay player. Australia has an atheist, unmarried, female Prime Minister. Even the cricket has changed. Ian Chappell, perhaps the epitome of the hard, angry working-class hero captain, doesn’t sink piss with the boys any more. He enjoys wine. Allan Border has gone from Captain Grumpy who would scream at his players to a genial old man commentating on the cricket. Steve Waugh would mentally break the opposition. Now he’s an active member of the MCC World Cricket committee, trying to cure the game’s ills. In less than 10 years Ricky Ponting went from a bar-room brawler who hated anyone who got in his way to a family man who would do anything for his teammates. Australia’s new quick aggressors are Peter Siddle, a vegetarian, Jimmy Pattinson, with haircuts from a Twilight catalogue, and Mitchell Johnson, who apparently once gave up the game because it was too hard. In the old days Australia would have someone vicious looking to rip into the opposition, a Merv Hughes type. Today that is often Shane Watson – a buffed, shaved underwear-model of a man who once slept in a teammate’s room because he was afraid of ghosts. The team and country has changed. Many people don’t like that, and perhaps Michael Clarke reminds them of it.
• • •
Simon Katich is a solid guy. His batting style is brutal on the eye, his chest hair there for all to see, and he played for Australia in a tough, uncompromising way. It took a long time for the public to fall for him but, when no one else in the side could make a run, they did. But perhaps the best thing he ever did for his public image was choke Michael Clarke. The story is often repeated, and even though Clarke was the chokee, he rarely comes out of it well. After a Test No.1 ranking-saving win against South Africa, the team partied hard. As they do. But the party doesn’t finish until Mike Hussey sings the team song “Under the Southern Cross I Stand”. Under the Southern Cross I stand, A sprig of wattle in my hand, A native of my native land, Australia, you fucken beauty. It’s an emotional, yelly, piss-fuelled ode to being an Australian cricketer. And Clarke wanted it to happen earlier because he wanted to go out with his wife. It was late at night and they’d been drinking for hours. Generally the song would have been sung earlier, but it hadn’t been. So Clarke asked. And Katich lost his shit and choked him.
• • •
With his place secure and his future looking bright, you expected Clarke to take off. To go from being a good batsman to a legend. Instead he became the public face of an underperforming side. A batting line-up of Katich, Watson, Ponting, Hussey and Clarke should have had many scapegoats, but Clarke became the one everyone hated. At the same time, Dougie Bollinger became one of the most popular Australian cricketers. Bollinger has a tenth of the skill of Clarke. But he’s a big dumb trier who once kissed the beer sponsor on his chest when trying to kiss the Australian emblem. Bollinger barely played, and had mixed results when he did, but Vodafone made a star out of him. He was being pushed as the sort of guy you’d want to see at your BBQ, the ocker Aussie jokester. Clarke was a polished PR machine at this stage. The days of him advertising near-naked and lubed up for Bonds were well over, but he wasn’t the everyman like Bollinger. It didn’t matter that Bollinger wasn’t a great; he was as good as he could be, and people liked that. That Clarke wasn’t a great still seemed to upset people.
• • •
Clarke added a mental tic. He started getting out just before major breaks in play, often when well set. Like never wanting to be dropped, it became something that seemed to eat at Clarke and restrict his normal instincts. He sacrificed many good starts because of this batting tic. It cost Australia so many times, and seemed to affect others as they could see how much pressure he was under. The very worst time was at the end of day four at Adelaide during the 2010–11 Ashes. Kevin Pietersen had been brought on to bowl his occasional offies, and Clarke had set himself and Australia up nicely to have a go at saving the game. Then a ball from KP bounced, and Clarke helped it to short leg. It seemed very out at the time, but wasn’t given. So the English referred it. Clarke had to know he was out, but something wouldn’t let him walk. Instead he waited out in the middle of the ground, knowing that he’d got out at the worst possible time and that there was no way the third umpire wouldn’t give him out. No one could understand why he thought he’d get away with it. Why not just walk? A few minutes after play, Michael Clarke issued an apology on Twitter for not walking. Now he was being attacked for apologising. He couldn’t win. By the time that series moved to Sydney, Clarke was a broken man in a battered team. The Australian crowd was not used to losing and, when Clarke walked out, their hatred boiled over and the local hero was booed. It wasn’t the whole crowd, and there was some applause as well. But when a local hero gets booed, something has gone terribly wrong. A Sydney newspaper ran a poll on who they wanted as the next Australian captain. Clarke got less than 15 per cent of the vote. Cameron White got over 40 per cent despite not being in the side. Had Dougie Bollinger been in the poll, Clarke would have lost to him.
• • •
Clarke was made captain. He changed management. Got a column with the paper that slagged him off the most. Distanced himself from his former fiancée. And started dating an old school friend. Australia beat Sri Lanka, and no one noticed. Australia drew with South Africa, and people were encouraged. And then Australia drew with New Zealand. Clarke had played some class innings, but the series against India was the main part of the summer. A loss or draw against them or any slip-up in his form and he’d be called a wanker again, no doubt.
• • •
There is one former Australian Test captain who never really fitted the mould. He was a good cricketer but not a great. He was a good tactician but not a hard-nosed leader. And he went to university. His name was Mark Taylor. “I don’t think I got anywhere near as tough a press as Michael Clarke’s got over the last couple of years. People saw me, yes, as different to Allan Border, which is good. We are all individuals. Michael Clarke was different because he wasn’t married with three kids, settled down in suburbia and living the sort of life that people got almost accustomed to Australian captains living. “He’s a single guy with a nice car, you know, and living in the Eastern suburbs – people just weren’t quite ready for that. But I think they are now, because they’ve stopped worrying about how he lives his life and are judging him on what he does on the field. And that’s first and foremost where we should judge the Australian captain.”
• • •
Michael Clarke used a cleanskin bat. He was on his home ground. He made a triple-century. He smashed the Indians. He gave interviews as he jogged off the ground. And he wore the baggy green while he did it. During the innings, Clarke would race off the ground and give a live interview with Mark Nicholas. That means that he must have been told at the drinks break, or at the previous break in play. When you can plan your interviews during an innings, you know you are in some form. In one knock Clarke had gone from wanker to God. This 329 was so powerful and masterful that even those who hate Clarke and everything he stands for had to get up and applaud. For all the working-class aspirational Bondi-brunch bikini-babe bullshit, Clarke had essentially got a bad run in the press and from the public because he had never lived up to the potential of a guy who can walk out in Test cricket for the first time and rip India apart. This innings was beyond great. It was what the greats do. It was pure. It was Australian. It looked great on the front pages of the papers that used to abuse him. It was very nearly double his highest previous score. It was grown-up. It was iconic. This new Australian team had their legend.
• • •
This appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald. 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. Who’s this bloke? We don’t know, either. We mistook the jazzy haircuts, the stunners hanging off your arm and those Bonds ads where you caught tennis balls in your jocks as a lack of character. News of your dust-up with Simon Katich a few years ago only seemed to reinforce those perceptions. Katich is the ultimate bloke’s bloke. You’re more likely to find a poster of Sonny Bill Williams on Hazem El Masri’s bedroom wall than any hair gel in Katto’s bathroom. It was only natural the typical Aussie bloke would side with Katich, a man they could relate to more. How could this upstart who used to grace the social pages as much as the sport pages captain Australia? It’s a revered position reserved for tough men like Allan Border, Steve Waugh and Ricky Ponting. Hard-nosed warriors that would rather hammer a slab in the dressing sheds than go anywhere near a cocktail party. How wrong we were. The past two years, you have proven you have more strength of character and toughness than any of us mere mortals could ever hope to have. Four double-centuries in a calendar year, against top-quality opposition in South Africa and India, has proven that in spades. Perhaps we were jealous of a young, good-looking man with the world at his feet. Let’s face it, every Australian male dreams about captaining their country, courting fashion models and being invited to the big parties. Or maybe it’s that you have changed your priorities and ideals, given yourself a complete image make-over in order to endear yourself to the public. Either way, it’s time the “metrosexual” image you’ve been unfairly slapped with meets a long overdue death. 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.
• • •
No one really expected Australia to beat South Africa this summer, so that they got so close to doing so, twice, meant that Clarke’s team had exceeded expectations. The series against Sri Lanka was always likely to be easy, giving Australia a chance to taste success before they prepared for a huge year against India and England. Mike Hussey changed the script when he announced his retirement. It is possible that with perhaps the biggest year of cricket ever before the Australian team, some players felt Hussey’s retirement was selfish. No one would have been more entitled to think that than Michael Clarke. The two of them were the middle order, and to lose Hussey before a tour to India, a tour to England and a home Ashes was disastrous. So when an internet rumour started that had some basis in fact, that Clarke and Hussey had had a massive falling-out because of this, it wasn’t that surprising. But the truthful part of the rumour was that at the end of Hussey’s last Test, he wanted to stay in the changing-rooms and drink with his mates. And Michael Clarke wanted to party on the Seahorse, James Packer’s (son of Kerry) yacht. Hussey stayed and drank, Clarke went and partied. That the rumour was so widely circulated was perhaps testament to some that Clarke is still not liked. Yet, had this story come out around the same time as the Katich incident, or really any time before the triple-century, it wouldn’t have been a largely ignored internet rumour. It would have made all the papers and had journalists hungry to flush it out. This was Clarke’s entire public persona in one story – he wanted to be on the big boat with the flashy people, instead of just sitting in a room with his mates and sinking piss.
• • •
Sitting on the white horse was the 1999 Miss Indy, Kyly Boldy. The reason I know that is because Michael Clarke tweeted the image of his wife, the horse and himself to announce his marriage. It was a perfect moment captured on screen, and on Twitter he said: “Happiest guy in the world. Married @KylyBoldy yesterday in front of our gorgeous families. Couldn’t be happier!” For those who hate him, it’s just another manicured glamour shot of some wanker. For those who have grown to love him, I think they get it. Clarke is a polished working-class boy who enjoys his life. Perhaps he’s not the hero many Australians are ready for. But in this new Australia, a polished socially mobile captain who worries about his PR is a far more honest representation of the country than the hard-boiled salt-of-the-earth everyman they desire.
Jarrod Kimber started up the cricket with balls blog before infesting cricket’s mainstream by working with The Cricketer, Wisden and Inside Cricket, before editing Spin. He’s now a professional lackey for ESPNcricinfo. He’s currently writing a screenplay called Godzilla vs the Zombies.
