Michael Clarke – A sportive skipper of a sinking ship

But Michael Clarke is not a normal, everyday skipper – he is the captain of the Australian cricket team – a position considered to be second only to that of the Prime Minister in Australia. Naturally, each one of his moves is perennially under the scanner, and a good twenty million eyes stare right at him.

Luckily, that is what keeps Clarke going – he loves being in the limelight; he loves being the centre of attention. Clarke made it very clear that he does not plan to step down irrespective of the thorough thrashing his team was subjected to in this series, and said that he will not allow failures in just a few matches define his career.

Australia too dependent on Clarke’s batting?

As Ian Chappell categorically stated, Clarke doesn’t fear defeat. He is arguably the most aggressive of the current crop of captains in the world, and certainly the most result-oriented.

His declaration against England in the final Test of this Ashes series, with the score at just 111, setting the target of 227 for England in 44 overs, goes to show how desperately he wanted to win – clearly, the thought of coming second just does not fit into his scheme of things.

He is willing to forgo the safety of a certain draw, and is ready to pay the heavy price of a loss in order to give his team maximum chance of conjuring up a victory.

He does not wait for things to happen – he makes things happen. He has no qualms about going against the tide, and against all the plans that he probably stayed up the entire night drawing, if his gut tells him to do so. Unlike his ultra-conservative counterpart Alastair Cook, Clarke is not method-driven or plan-driven. He is purely result-driven.

And over this series, Clarke has done everything in his capacity to better his team’s chances. He has chopped and changed the batting order according to the situation, and has even spent most of the series batting at two drop, despite it not being his favoured position. He has set aggressive fields, and has never hesitated to pull a rabbit out of his hat, often bringing Warner, Smith or himself into the attack.

Off the field, he has been intense, earnest and serious. Despite not being directly involved in the selection process anymore, he has rarely dodged the hard questions, irrespective of how uncomfortable the media may have made him. He has not washed any dirty linen in public, and has never picked on any individual’s performance on camera.

In this piece, Michael Jeh sums up the entirety of the situation beautifully – he says that Australia is not in this treacherous situation because of Clarke’s captaincy – they are here despite it.

Michael Clarke – From being in the best team in the world to being the lone world class player in a struggling side

Michael Clarke has been through a lot. From the dizzying heights of his century on debut in an invincible eleven astutely led by the tactical genius of Ricky Ponting, to being the sole genuine world class player in a team whose fortunes are rapidly spiralling downwards, Clarke has seen it all. It cannot be easy being the only surviving member of Ponting’s devils, where drawing a match – let alone losing – was unacceptable.

It was once said that a blind monkey could lead the Australian team of the late nineties and early noughties to victory. Michael Clarke, however, has not been blessed with such a team.

So, there’s no easy way out – it will take tremendous amount of hard work and massive dollops of luck to lift Australian cricket from the trenches they are in today. And Clarke, as usual, is in the centre of it all.