Hamstrung Clarke's Gabba window closing

Michael Clarke's chances of playing the first Test at the Gabba appear extremely slim, after the Cricket Australia physio Alex Kountouris revealed the captain will be unable to run or bat until only a week before the match.

Clarke will not play next week's Sheffield Shield match for New South Wales starting on Tuesday, which leaves few options for any practice before the first Test against India. Worryingly, Kountouris revealed that the hamstring complaint had also caused Clarke back condition to flare up yet again, and it will take time for him to regain not only mobility but also confidence and form as a batsman after a lean run against Pakistan.

However, Kountouris is hopeful that vice-captain Brad Haddin, who is recovering from a shoulder injury he suffered during the recent Abu Dhabi Test, will play in the Shield game against South Australia at the SCG. Should Haddin come through that clash satisfactorily it will ease the pressure of selecting a new captain if Clarke is ruled out of the Gabba Test.

Asked how long he expected Clarke to be unavailable, Kountouris said it was hard to predict. "I can't put a figure on it right now," he said in Sydney. "As he is right now, he hasn't started running, he hasn't started doing any of the functional things that we want him to do. He's not able to bat. So he's not ready to play at the moment. His next game of cricket is a grade game on the weekend and he's not available for that.

"There's a Shield game starting next Tuesday and he's not available for that. That's as far as we're looking. He needs to start running and start doing things before we make a decision on whether he's okay to play. I'm still hopeful that he might be right for the first Test because that's two weeks away.

"It is not that dramatic that he's going to miss the whole summer. There comes a point where there's no more healing to be done and waiting longer does not give any more benefit. The real risks for him are he's got a back injury, it puts a lot of pressure on his hamstrings, he's an older athlete and that's a risk factor. He's had multiple hamstring injuries on both legs. They're not risk factors we can get rid of."

Clarke first suffered the hamstring injury at Australia's first training session in Zimbabwe ahead of the ODI tri-series in August. He aggravated the problem while batting against the hosts, retiring hurt then coming back at the end of the innings. He did not take to the field until late in a game Australia went on to lose, even bowling himself in a despairing attempt to force a win, despite the earlier injury.

Kountouris was not on that tour, instead flying to Sydney to meet Clarke when he returned home early from Africa. The pair have had a close relationship for some years, based upon Kountouris' proven ability to nurse Clarke's chronic back problem through numerous hurdles, and their mutual trust has seldom been broken by Clarke defying Kountouris' informed opinions.

Although he played both Tests against Pakistan in the UAE, Clarke again hurt the hamstring during the first ODI against South Africa in Perth last week. A period of some confusion and mixed messages has followed, with the team performance manager Pat Howard appearing adamant that Haddin will lead Australia at the Gabba and that Clarke must re-think his whole approach to his hamstring and back problems in order to extract the most value out of his remaining years.

However the national selector Rod Marsh and the coach Darren Lehmann have both been far more coy, refusing to countenance the thought of Clarke missing Brisbane while Kountouris, the team doctor Peter Brukner and other medical experts assessed the various issues around a repeatedly injured hamstring.

"I'm not sure if there was confusion, we knew what was going on, he hurt his hamstring, there was a process so we had to do a scan," Kountouris said. "Then we had to get the scans looked at and because he had a re-injury we had to send the scans around to a few different people - it included a surgeon, included a specialist radiologist, included a whole bunch of people, so that took a few days for us to get that.

"I'm not sure if there was any confusion in that time period, but to me he got injured and it was no more confusing than it always is when someone gets injured, it is complex, you try to work out through a maze of things what exactly is going on. From my perspective there wasn't confusion but I'm not sure about everyone else in the system, I can't talk for them."

Kountouris has not yet ruled out the possibility of Clarke playing the Gabba Test, which begins on December 4, but the Australians would be loath to risk him if there was any doubt over his fitness at the start of a four-Test series that is followed by the World Cup.

The hamstring injury is complicated by the fact that it is linked to Clarke's chronic back problem, which he has battled for most of his career and which caused him to miss the Delhi Test against India in 2013. That is the only Test Clarke has missed due to injury, but unless he makes a miraculous recovery over the next fortnight, it seems unlikely to be the last.