By Spiro Zavos
November 14th 2007 @ 4:20am
Love Michael Clarke’s batting, admire Michael Hussey
The two things I took out of Australia’s overwhelming victory over a highly-regarded Sri Lanka are first, that the selectors seem to have done the impossible and found very good replacements for the great players who left the side at the end of last season; and second, the sheer joy and pleasure Michael Clarke provides when he plays a long innings.
Neville Cardus, the flowery cricket and music writer for The Manchester Guardian, once wrote about how he used to pray when England played Australia for Victor Trumper, the batting genius from Paddington, Sydney, to make a century but for England to win.
This prayer has the essential truth about cricket in it, that the result is important and so, too, are the aesthetics of the game.
When it comes to batsmen there are those who are remembered because of the vast number of runs they made. And there are the handful of others whose memory is forever green and sweet because of the way they played. Michael Hussey falls into the category of the prolific and industrious scorer. And Michael Clarke into the category of player whose exciting and beautiful batting style is far more memorable than the quantity of runs he scores.
Hussey seems to me to bat like a production line. Each stroke is exactly right. The placement is precise. Scoring runs seems to be predictable and inevitable and somehow the same all the time.
Clarke, though, is unpredictable and not inevitable with his run-scoring. His average now in test cricket is up to 46, thanks to the not out 145 in the first test of this summer which moved him 4 points up from 42. Hussey, thanks to his century, now averages 82.38, a phenomenal average that is second only to Don Bradman for a batsman scoring over 1000 runs in test cricket.
Hussey’s century took 196 balls to make, one ball fewer than Phil Jacques’ 197 balls for his century. Clarke’s century took 164 balls. But the interesting statistic in this is that the first 50 took 101 balls and the second 50 only 63 balls.
With Hussey there is no great excitement generated about his play. He has taken the risks out of his game by developing an exact technique and temperament that has him concentrating fiercely on each ball and playing each ball on its merits. The predominant image you have of Hussey is the way he mouths the mantra ‘Watch the ball’ with a Tibetan prayer-wheel insistence.
Clarke often doesn’t play the ball on its merits. A good delivery will be banged to the boundary, to the bewilderment of the bowler and the delight of spectators. But sometimes a poor delivery will get him out. On the first ball after lunch on the second day of the test Clarke charged Murali, slogged across the line and was lucky to keep the ball along the ground. It was the shot of a backyard cricketer. At the end of the over he walked down the pitch with a naughty-boy grin on his face to chat with the grimly-obsessed Hussey.
Of course, Hussey’s sheer weight of runs makes him a more valuable player than Clarke, generally. But there are times when the impudence and wit of Clarke’s batting will make him the match-winner on a pitch or in conditions that will defeat even Hussey. In the same way, Stan McCabe played a couple of match-winning innings that were beyond Don Bradman, as the great batsman conceded as McCabe blazed away against a ferocious England Bodyline attack.
For me, anyway, this is why I love watching Michael Clarke bat and will turn off the television set often when he is dismissed. You never know what is going to happen, or not happen. And it is all done with style and panache.
I admire Michael Hussey’s play and appreciate its value to the team but I often don’t bother to watch as he accumulates his runs.
My justification for this heresy is that when a Japanese master makes a pot he always puts a slight flaw in the work on the grounds that perfection is boring.
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Lenny said | November 14th 2007 @ 7:50am | Report comment
Interesting analysis, Spiro. There’s something special about seeing a beautiful stroke-maker in full flow. When you see talent like Clarke, it becomes clear why there has only ever been several hundred cricketers to make the Australian Test team.
Nixon Gill said | November 14th 2007 @ 12:30pm | Report comment
Nicely written Spiro, M.Clarke for me is like Mark Waugh, you’d walk over your mother in law to go see him bat, sadly we saw too much of Steve & not enough of Mark.
If I get to see one of Michael’s Test hundreds live I’ll be happy.
Ali Khan said | November 14th 2007 @ 1:47pm | Report comment
Well thought out and executed article, I would agree that there are some players you would pay twice the entry fee to see play. Mark Waugh was an artist at work, the lazy elegance was just so arrogant, Clarke is in the same vein. However the modern era is seeing more ‘production lines’ rather then raw talent.. Especially in Australia
Terry Kidd said | November 15th 2007 @ 7:55am | Report comment
Agreed Ali Khan …. however in my time I loved to watch Doug Walters, Paul Sheehan, Greg Chappell, Mark Waugh, and now Michael Clarke …. all were/are elegant strokemakers who on their day made/make batting look easy. There is one other who seemed to be on the same track, who could play effortlessly, but then seemed to fall away and disappear … one Peter Toohey …. he was in the vein of Doug Walters but never seemed to reach the heights to which he seemed destined.
spiro zavos said | November 17th 2007 @ 3:55pm | Report comment
The degree of difficulty in batting like Peter Toohey, Mark Waugh or Michael Clarke is jmuch higher than for players who grind out the runs. Bob Simpson came into the NSW team, which was extremely strong at the time, as a teenager with a dazzling, McCabe-like game. But when he was dropped for failing to score the bucket- ull of runs expected he went off to West Australia ande reinvented himself as a grinding, prolific runscorer, a bit like Steve Waugh. Of course, it’s history that he flourished (if this is the right verb) in churning out his runs with a mininum of flourish and charm.
Give give me the young Simpson or Michel Clarke to watch any day. But the old Simpson or the prolific Michael Hussey to win matches with the weight of their run-making are the match-winners – unfortunately.
Terry Kidd said | November 19th 2007 @ 7:00am | Report comment
Does anyone know what became of Peter Toohey?
hoot said | December 28th 2007 @ 5:04pm | Report comment
Went back and palyed Gradw Cricket for a while and then played many years with Lindfield in the Sydney Shires comp