Jack's high on cricket's future

In the Sunday Herald Sun, Rod Nicholson profiles Cricket Australia's new chairman Jack Clarke and finds him to be an upbeat man who declares: "Just put a beard on me and I'd be Father Christmas."

Clarke is a likable bloke who is right at home having a beer with his mates. So much so that to outsiders he will come across as "one of the boys" - a vastly different perception to former board members who mostly were regarded as faceless guardians of the game.

But for all the jolliness, bubbling beneath his rotund physique, the 54-year-old is one of Australia's most astute cricket administrators whose grounding has been fashioned to accept the current role.

In the Sun-Herald, Daniel Lane meets one of the young up-and-coming allrounders in Australian domestic cricket, the New South Wales legspinner-batsman Steven Smith.