Clarke's a career ever so near to greatness

"A hard act to follow. Almost impossible. But what could I do?"

Paul McCartney said this of his solo career. What followed his part in the most influential band of our time was never quite so stellar, but highly successful and very true to McCartney - not everyone will admit they loved Wings, but no-one could deny McCartney's commitment to entertain, nor his enthusiasm for doing it. He would never live up to the achievements that went before, so why bother trying to emulate them? McCartney went his own way.

The young Michael Clarke was more George Harrison than McCartney, the junior member of an Australian team replete with as many legendary egos as matchless performances. But his life as both batsman and captain took place in a period like that which anticipated and then followed the breakup of the Beatles. In many ways, Clarke had an impossible act to follow, and so resolved to follow his own muse rather than seek to mimic his forebears. Not everyone appreciated him for it, whether it be the players themselves or the Australian public.

Nevertheless, his commitment to being himself did pay off handsomely, as Clarke went on to compile one of the great records of the contemporary game. He also led Australia to better results than many would have predicted for him on the day he took over from Ricky Ponting at a press conference in the old SCG basement in March 2011. Whether as a batsman or a captain, Clarke demonstrated a love for the flair-filled sides of the game, and for individual expression the likes of which many others had declined to show.

It is no minor detail that Clarke's childhood batting hero was Michael Slater, another brash young New South Welshman with twinkle toes and an effervescent eagerness to use them. In 1993, Slater burst onto the scene in a manner Clarke would replicate 11 years later. Both were not always the smoothest fit into the Australian team of the time, and both were "put in their place" by feeling the selectors' axe. Where they differed was that Slater's career petered out in fits of emotional extremes, while Clarke grew in strength. He was ambitious, but tough with it.

One wise observer of Australian cricket once noted that a major difference between Sir Donald Bradman and Allan Border was that the former knew his place in the game's history as he was carving it out, while the latter remained utterly oblivious to the same. Clarke was imbued with a strong sense of his own talent from an early age, filled with brash ideas by the batting coach Neil D'Costa and encouraged to train obsessively by the fact his parents owned an indoor cricket centre. The monetary value and social place of Australian cricketers was changing rapidly through Clarke's teenage years, and he picked that up more quickly than most.

Early forays into representative cricket were harbingers of what was to follow: Clarke was a left-arm spin prodigy for Western Suburbs, a dominant junior player, a teenaged captain of some distinction and a star of Rod Marsh's Academy in Adelaide. Mark Taylor saw the polite, inquisitive side of Clarke when Marsh deputised him to pick up the former captain from Adelaide airport one day. Shane Watson saw the harder side when his efforts to emulate the best young talent of the day through imitation were brusquely received by Clarke. More of that later.

For NSW, Clarke was not immediately prolific. Many opponents, including Chris Rogers, could sense Clarke's was a special presence at the crease, but that did not stop them capitalising on a tendency to skim the ball in the air. When an as-yet uncapped Clarke went to India with the Test team in 2004, he boasted a $1.25 million sponsorship with Dunlop-Slazenger, but a first-class average comfortably under 40. That turned heads, and not all the right way.

Still, his talent was obvious enough to have Darren Lehmann offering up his spot in order to make room for Clarke, a suggestion the selectors did not take up. Instead a broken thumb for Ponting had Clarke slotting into the middle order, while Simon Katich subbed in at No. 3. This pair of opposites put on 106 to shore up Australia's innings in the first Test in Bangalore, before Clarke galloped on to 151, the picture-perfect debut topped off by the fact he reached three figures in a baggy green cap. Mum, dad and grandpa were there to see it all.

That innings and that match will remain indelible memories of Clarke, and in truth there were few others to match it until he became captain. In between times Clarke was in and out of the team, had variable relationships with team-mates, and was promoted to be Ponting's deputy at a time when numerous others coveted the role.

Andrew Symonds, disillusioned by this among other things, went from Clarke's closest friend in the team to anything but in the space of a single 2008 West Indies tour. Katich grabbed Clarke by the throat in the SCG dressing room six months later, and many wondered at why seconds were allowed to pass before the scuffle was broken up. A decision to depart from New Zealand in 2010 to break up with Lara Bingle was decried; a comeback hundred in Wellington barely registered. The coach Tim Nielsen spoke forebodingly of Clarke's chronic back trouble as many wondered for how long he could stand up physically to the demands of the game.

By early 2011, the time for leadership change had arrived. Clarke observed the functioning of the team without always contributing to it - he would lead differently to Ponting, but declined to tread on the incumbent's toes even as Australia's results declined. There was an inflexibility, even fearfulness, to the team around this time, best exemplified by the way spin bowlers were used and abused. Many loved Ponting and their loyalty was reciprocated, but other areas were allowed to fall away. Three innings defeats to England were not something any captain, coach nor chairman of selectors could have survived.

Days after Australia returned from a timid World Cup campaign, Clarke was captain. Within the week he was taking the team to Bangladesh for three ODIs. Clarke started with a hundred, and his mind buzzed with ideas on how to improve results. Others of like mind assembled, some by accident, some design. The bowling coach Craig McDermott emerged to mould an attack Clarke could marshal, while Ponting and Michael Hussey stuck around as senior pros. Katich was harshly discarded at the selectors' behest; Clarke was fingered, wrongly, for the cull.

As a leader, Clarke championed individualism. He did not want his men trying to match Ponting or Glenn McGrath, rather to be the best they could be. This resonated with the likes of Ryan Harris and Peter Siddle, who emerged as key pace performers. Most of all it was a godsend to Nathan Lyon, who was chosen speculatively in Sri Lanka but quickly established a niche in the team under Clarke that no spinner had managed under Ponting. Watson's bowling was frequently called upon, to great effect.

Critically, the team was to fashion ways of winning consistently at home under Clarke, as his nimble captaincy was given full vent by fast pitches and a strong pace bowling attack. As full-time leader he was to win 13 and lose only two Tests out of 18 on Australian soil over four seasons, whereas Ponting had given up six defeats against 14 victories in 22 Tests over the preceding four. That discrepancy had been the major reason why Australia fell from a ranking of one to five during the latter's reign.

Clarke's batting had matured into a beautiful marriage of daring and discretion. He dismantled Rangana Herath in Colombo, dispatched Dale Steyn in Cape Town. There was a hundred against New Zealand at the Gabba - alongside Adelaide his most productive ground - and then an avalanche against India. He erected a monumental 329* at the SCG, then followed up with a mere double in Adelaide. Ponting, enjoying his final rays of batting sunshine, was Clarke's prime partner in both innings.

The following summer he coshed two more double-centuries against South Africa, the second in Adelaide part of a barely believable first day scorecard of 5 for 482. That sort of an onslaught would have crushed any other team, but Graeme Smith's team held firm to eke out a draw before routing Clarke's men on a fast track in Perth. In Ponting's last match, Clarke was denied his first opportunity to take Australia back to world No. 1 in Tests.

Two years later, Clarke took up the second. A riotous home Ashes sweep of England provided the launching pad, as the anxieties of three consecutive defeats were blasted away by Mitchell Johnson and Brad Haddin. That series was the apogee of Clarke's time in charge, fairly bristling with aggression, desire and downright mongrel. "Get ready for a broken f***en arm" was back alley talk as grand statement of intent. England were taken aback not only by the ferocity of it all, but also by the discipline.

It was a tired team that went on from that series to South Africa, and an exhausted one that reclined after edging the series 2-1. The Centurion and Cape Town Tests were won by huge margins thanks largely to Johnson and Harris, but Clarke's hundred at Newlands, after a peppering from Morne Morkel that left him with a cracked shoulder, was hugely symbolic. Here was Clarke not taking a backward step. Here was Clarke being tough. Here was Clarke being everything expected of an Australian captain. Here was Clarke victorious.

In many ways it might have been the right time to finish up. Clarke was young, true, but he had taken the team back to the summit, and it was a long way down. His body was exhausted from the effort, including daily routines on his back that stretched the bounds of any reasonable man's sanity. Most of the next 18 months were to be beset by frustration, conflict and above all grief.

Tours of Zimbabwe and the UAE were to encapsulate all the problems experienced by Clarke's teams on the road. There were other horror tours of course. West Indies in 2012 was merely satisfactory, a limited-overs tour of the UK the same year not even close to that. In damp conditions, Steven Finn darted the white Dukes ball around like a premonition of the red one three years later. In the dressing room, Watson squabbled with Mickey Arthur in a preview of what would unfold in 2013 on the subcontinent.

At home, Clarke operated soundly in an environment where players had friends and family at close hand, and could happily operate in their own circles. But on tour his tendency to withdraw from the group, hidden away in his hotel suite, allowed difficulties to mount and problems to fester. His solution to most problems on and off the field was to work harder, and in India he was to sanction a summary suspension of four players that showed a tin ear for both the mood of the team and the expectations of the Australian public. Later that year back trouble kept him away from the team at a critical moment, Arthur's tenure unraveling in Birmingham.

In Zimbabwe, Clarke jagged a hamstring but made it worse by coming out on the field in a desperate attempt to retrieve a looming loss to the unfancied hosts, even bowling an over of clearly painful slow left-arm. In the UAE he argued with the selectors over the composition of the team, as one shouting match in particular betrayed his plain differences of opinion with the chairman Rod Marsh. Both trips ended in defeat.

As coach, Lehmann had provided some initial salve for these issues. He took the job after being assured that Clarke would not be a selector, and worked quickly to mend the fractures that had emerged within the team. Watson was to be rehabilitated as a key member of the side, Johnson imbued with confidence. Chris Rogers, persona non grata during Ponting's time as captain, became another key contributor. Clarke accepted a reduced commission, responsible for making runs, setting fields and naming the batting order. As an arrangement of convenience it worked brilliantly for a time, but not for all time.

By November 2014, Lehmann, Marsh and Clarke had worn each other's patience thin. The captain's physical infirmities had mounted up once more, as hamstring problems recurred. The physio Alex Kountouris, a longtime ally of Clarke, was caught in the middle as the selectors demanded he play a tour match in Adelaide. Kountouris felt this unrealistic, and Clarke decided he would prove himself fit by playing a grade game engineered to allow him a hit on the appointed Saturday. This arrangement infuriated the selectors, and left Clarke in near enough to open warfare with them. With the possible exception of Steve Waugh, no player yet born has won that sort of a fight.

On November 25, a Sheffield Shield day, it was all to come to a head. Clarke's singleminded determination had pushed him into a corner, while the selectors openly debated whether they could work with him again. There have been rumours that Clarke was set to be sacked, but in truth he elected to withdraw himself from the Gabba Test against India. But then, shortly after lunch at the SCG, Phillip Hughes was felled by a bouncer, never to be revived.

In the horrendously painful times that followed, all of Clarke's strengths and skills would come together. His headstrong manner helped Clarke to work decisively alongside Hughes' family as a conduit to the rest of the cricketing world. His polished yet plain-spoken public persona was employed to communicate the thoughts of the family and the national team to the world. His frankly expressed emotion would give the nation a prism through which to feel a most unexpected grief.

At the funeral in Macksville, Clarke delivered one of the game's most heartfelt odes. At the rescheduled first Test in Adelaide, he played one of its most heartfelt innings. Clarke's back and hamstring would both give out during the game, but he made a hundred just the same. Australia won a cathartic game that Clarke called the "most important of my career", but the toll was plain.

When Clarke re-emerged in the new year, his hamstring was brand new, and he would lead the team to a World Cup victory as noteworthy as anything else he had achieved. But it was clear the fire inside him was fading, and the desire to keep going no longer as intense. Like the rest of Australia's ageing squad, Clarke went to the West Indies and England with hope. But he could not find the thread of his batting, and early signs of promise gave way to ugly defeats on seaming pitches.

Clarke tried everything: conservative starts and aggressive ones, long sleeved shirts and short, his old Masuri helmet and the new version, and finally a move back from No. 4 to No. 5, the position in which he made his name as a Test batsman, and a captain. Nothing, though, would bring the runs back, nor the feeling of happiness and rhythm at the crease. Ultimately Clarke, this man of his times, would be forced to emulate the words and actions of that older generation. He conceded it was time to go, and that he "just knew".

What then shall be concluded of Clarke? He was an ever so near to great batsman, and an ever so near to great captain. Perhaps as a combination of the two he can be seen as a great cricketer, and as a fascinating, occasionally infuriating but forever driven man. A bit like Paul McCartney, Clarke could never replicate the era in which he first made his name, but nor did he try to. Wings did okay, and so too did Clarke.