Clarke firms as next generation captain

John Buchanan is in the final week of his seven-year coaching role with Australia, but he has not stopped talking about the future by suggesting Michael Clarke could be the next captain. After being dropped two years ago, Clarke has returned stronger and more mature and has been a crucial part of Australia's march into the World Cup final with 464 runs, including 60 not out in the semi-final win over South Africa.

The leadership debate is not an immediate issue as Ricky Ponting is only 32, but Buchanan has tipped Clarke as a contender when he retires. He was a captain of the Australia Under-19s and was named deputy to Michael Hussey for the one-day tour of New Zealand in February before he went home with a hip injury.

"I see him growing as a person and he is obviously performing pretty well in the field," Buchanan said in the Sydney Morning Herald. "Obviously he is [considered a future captain] because he should be around the team for years to come.

"By that stage he will be a senior player and should have an incredible record behind him. But who is to know what will happen in the future?"

Clarke began his Test career in India when his friend and coach Neil D'Costa was his manager, but before the Ashes series he swapped to the management group that looks after Matthew Hayden. "He is associating himself with the right people," Buchanan said in the Courier-Mail. "No disrespect to people before him, but for Michael's future he needs to associate and be educated by the right people. I see him making those sort of choices."

While Buchanan looked ahead, he also allowed himself to go back over the relationships with some of his current and former charges. In the Herald Clarke, Hayden and Shane Watson were listed as some of Buchanan's successes, but he regretted he was unable to connect with the legspinners Shane Warne and Stuart MacGill.

"People are not compatible with each other all the time and probably their style and my styles were never going to nicely coalesce," he said. "There have been moments when they have gone in the same direction and moments when they haven't, not necessarily due to them or due to me. It's just the way it is.

"I always regret that you don't have the perfect relationship with everybody because if you don't it's very difficult, I think, to bring out the best in them. That to me is one of the roles of the coach, that you're always trying to expand somebody's horizons and if you don't have a good relationship with someone there's no way you can achieve that. I regret that."