Clarke reassured by Sutherland

James Sutherland spoke with Michael Clarke to reassure the captain of his support at the highest levels of Cricket Australia in a private meeting before the Allan Border Medal.

ESPNcricinfo understands that Sutherland, the CA chief executive, spoke for around an hour with Clarke in Sydney on the afternoon before the annual awards night, to assuage the injured captain of any doubts he had about his place in the future of the team, following rumblings that he had not been missed in his absence.

Clarke had awoken that morning to read an opinion piece by the Sydney Morning Herald's Andrew Webster, asserting that some elements of the national team had indicated a desire to "move on" from Clarke under the new leadership of Steven Smith. Disagreements between Clarke and the selectors had bubbled to the surface preceding the start of the Test series against India in November.

At the time, Sutherland had sought a "please explain" from Clarke about the mixed messages that had appeared when he and the selectors were publicly at odds over how he might best prove his fitness for the India series.

"I will speak to Michael and others who have been involved in the process to make sure I understand where these things have gone awry," Sutherland said in November, on the morning before Phillip Hughes was struck, an event that put all disagreements aside for a time.

"It's not really appropriate for me to go into any more detail. All I can say is I am concerned that there are some mixed messages coming out of Cricket Australia in the last 24 hours or so and I want to understand why things have fallen off the rails a bit there."

Numerous phone calls were being made between senior figures in and around Australian cricket that very morning, and there were doubts at the time about how Clarke and the selectors could work together. However the two weeks of shock and mourning that followed Hughes' death served as something of a circuit-breaker, and Sutherland was among many at CA deeply moved and impressed by Clarke's work as a team spokesman and a conduit to the Hughes family during those difficult days.

Sutherland's meeting with Clarke last week underlined the fact that as captain of Australia he must operate with the support of not only teammates and selectors but also CA's management, administration and board of directors. Equally they must all withdraw support before a new permanent leader can be endorsed. Backing for Clarke at these high levels has not wavered in recent times, even if differences of opinion further down the chain of command have existed.

A greater uniformity of public views and words in recent days, notably from the influential head coach Darren Lehmann, has contrasted significantly with the scenes witnessed earlier in the summer, suggesting that Clarke is not the only leadership figure to have been spoken to by Sutherland in recent days about the need to present a united front in the lead-up to the World Cup.

A CA spokesman declined to comment on the meeting.