The Surfer

Australian team strength and conditioning coach Stuart Karppinen gave an insight into some of the scientific strategy the Australian captain went through to maintain peak performance across his innings, which stretched over three days of play, posing a unique physical and mental challenge. At the end of day one, when he was on 47 not out, Clarke had a standard massage, which included usual special attention to his chronic back injury. ''The next morning he did his hydration testing, which involves a urine test from which we can measure how much fluid he needs to take in to reach the right level,'' Karppinen said.

Also, if Clarke thought about it during his long innings, he might have recognised that the opportunity before him was almost certainly a one-off. The chance for such immortality comes occasionally. Only a handful in Test history have made more than one triple-century. This was his moment. He was in total command, the Indian attack at his mercy. Clarke could conceivably have reached Brian Lara's record by batting for just an hour-and-a-half longer. The match was scarcely more than halfway to its five-day allowance. He would still have had two days to bowl India out a second time and, as it turned out, the tourists' second innings didn't last much beyond a day.

So Bombay wins easily — with an enormous six smashed just in front of where I sit, no less — and the players shake hands and they all retire slowly to the pavilion. What’s the happy audience at the Wankhede chanting? “Jeetega bhai jeetega, Mumbai jeetega (Mumbai will win)“, to push the team on to greater Ranji glory? “Jaffer, Jaffer”, paying tribute to the captain, now the most prolific run-scorer in Ranji Trophy history? No, it’s “Rahul, Rahul”. Which manages to leave me simultaneously encouraged and sad. Somewhere in that conundrum is a story about a once-proud tournament.

It is never easy to tell a long-serving employee that his time is up. But it is a job that has to be done, and done with as much dignity as possible. VVS Laxman certainly looks out of it - making big hundreds needs fitness and he doesn’t look the part at the moment. Dravid is not the same player who stood alone on the burning deck in England ... Despite being the oldest player in the world, Dravid is probably the fittest in the Indian team, which is both a tribute to his application and a commentary on the lack of it among the rest.

The hoo-ha over Tendulkar’s 100th century is taking the focus away from the real issue - the batsman’s inability to convert good starts into match-saving, if not match-winning efforts. He continues to look the best batsman in the side 22 years after his debut, and had he completed a century in Sydney, the country would have forgiven India’s first innings batting which cost them the match. Michael Clarke showed India how team victory is more important than individual statistical achievement, but India’s obsession with the individual has always been compensation for collective failure.

Success for Clarke seems to spark the same public reaction as failure: a national referendum on the crucial question of whether he is a good bloke. With recent captains such as Ponting, Steve Waugh, Mark Taylor and Allan Border, people thought they knew already. With some, they didn't care one way or the other. Perhaps Michael Clarke: Saintly Hero or Axe Murderer? is for Channel Nine to ask its viewers. This rather bizarre fretfulness over his immortal soul is something he shares in common with Don Bradman, as well as now being Test triple-century-makers.

It was a Test match played on an epic scale, but won in the end by shifts - hunches, quirks, ricochets and deviations - so small as to be almost imperceptible ... Clarke in this match demonstrated touches both exquisite and Midas. He spent all but 40 minutes of it on the ground. He is making a new name for himself, and it was written all over this Test.

My advice to players is, choose your counsel carefully, open your mind to learning, and be personally responsible for your own development and performance. There's a need to choose emerging players to find out who has the required talent to be persevered with. This work should start immediately. At the same time it would be prudent to look at the current crop of players with a view to assessing which of them are most likely to be good enough to retain their places in the team through to and including the World Cup in 2015.

In the past two World Cups, the reality has been that selections, player preparation and their approach tactically to games have been more about saving face (putting in a respectable performance) than aggressively going out to win games. The fear of losing badly has tended to dominate thinking and consequently winning has too often relied on opponents having a bad day.

An innings such as this is by definition larger than life, yet consists of a repetition of life-sized acts: those glorious covers drives, that effortless easing to leg, the feather-light footwork against the off-spinner. One ball might have halted it. Ask Shaun Marsh, who faced only one, or Rahul Dravid, who last night was bowled an exceptional one by Ben Hilfenhaus. Yet Clarke outlived all of the game's happenstance, leaving for the record an innings that will outlive him.

To go with the usual array of drives, flicks and glances, there were yesterday some pectoral-flexing pull shots, a sweep he absolutely nailed off Ravichandran Ashwin, and a pick-up off the pads to a Umesh Yadav inswinger that flew like an artillery shell. It used to be that Clarke could be constrained by the old ball and defensive fields; here he showed an instinct to take on rather than merely to tick over.

Resuming, Ponting re-marked his guard, recomposing himself. But impatience overwhelmed judgment when he drove Ishant Sharma to mid-on and called intemperately. Sensing disaster as Zaheer Khan swooped at mid-on, Ponting dived headlong. It would not have saved him if Zaheer's throw had hit, but it did not. When he dared to look up, Ponting saw the bails intact.

The acclaim came in four parts: a roar, a gasp, a muting and a redoubled roar as Ponting at last hoisted himself off the ground and raised his arms. His shirt, smeared in dirt, looked like a little boy's. So did his face. He and Clarke looked at one another and laughed at the mischief of it all. This was Ponting's 40th Test century, but his first for two years, almost to the week. At 37, he goes on with lighter tread.

With Australia under that much pressure, the least Ishant and Umesh could have done was to bowl tightly in support of Zaheer. Instead, they made it easy for two experienced batsmen to play their way out of trouble. Umesh is 24, and in only his fourth Test. Ishant, a year younger, is in his 43rd. Ishant, a year younger, is in his 43rd. Only one of them can still expect leniency for being young and inexperienced.

If you want to see fancy Indian footwork, bypass the SCG and take in a Bollywood musical. Virender Sehwag has never bothered with the soft shoe shuffle, preferring to stand to attention and play his shots - even when he might be better served playing someone elses. But V.V.S. Laxman is either posing for a statue or nursing a bad case of gout.