Do you want to be Australia's Test captain?
Peter English
25-Feb-2013
PA Photos
Michael Clarke pauses when asked the question. "I could sit here and lie and say I don't think about it," he tells Iain Payten of the Daily Telegraph.
When it comes to it, ambition is a tricky animal. There are those who say overtly coveting this particular job questions if you are the best man for it. Hence the pause. "The truth is I hope I continue to get opportunities, whether it be one-day cricket, now with Twenty20 cricket or hopefully one day I get the chance to captain in Test cricket," Clarke admits. "But it is all so far away. Right now, I am over the moon and stoked I have been given the chance to captain the Twenty20. My leader, still, is Ricky Ponting.”
Malcolm Conn, writing in the Weekend Australian, says Matthew Hayden’s passion has moved from playing cricket to saving it.
Less than a year out of the game and already a Cricket Australia board member, Hayden fears that the sport he dedicated decades to is being overplayed and undervalued. "I don't buy this 'more is better' mentality," Hayden said. "We should have an obsession with perfection."
In the same paper Ricky Ponting talks about what he has been doing during some rare time off.
Jamie Pandaram, in the Sydney Morning Herald, looks at the task of Denesh Ramdin, who has the job of outwitting Ricky Ponting in his backyard with a crew of under-rated, under-achieving players who've known mostly failure for a decade.
Peter English is former Australasia editor of ESPNcricinfo