Something is wrong with Michael Clarke’s batting and he knows it. It is why on Wednesday he spent more time in the Adelaide Oval nets than the rest of the Australian batsmen combined, facing up to spin, pace and the throw-downs of Ricky Ponting and coach Tim Nielsen.
Clarke’s assiduous session, in which he began muttering angrily at himself before improving later on, featured plenty of dialogue with his captain in particular.
Ponting engineered a subtle technical tweak to have the Australian vice-captain standing more upright at the crease.
According to Clarke, the change seemed to be working.
“I was just working on a few things and obviously Punter’s seen me bat for a long time now through my career and picks things up at training,” said Clarke.
“So I was getting him to throw me a few balls and get him to have a look and see what his thoughts were.
“He was just mentioning that I was a bit low in my stance, so I just tried to stand a little bit taller and see if it worked.
“I felt a little bit better, if you saw my net session I struggled at the start there and felt like it got better throughout a pretty long net session so that was good.”
There was plenty of frankness from Clarke about a torturous Gabba innings of nine from 50 balls in 76 minutes, an effort that caused many to assume his back was still giving him trouble.
However Clarke said his problems had been more to do with intelligent English bowling and his own sluggishness, which has been present in Tests since he moved from No.5 to No.4 in the batting order.
“I thought they bowled pretty well, pretty good areas, there was a little bit in the wicket and Jimmy Anderson was through a pretty good spell,” said Clarke.
“But in saying that my feet weren’t moving as well as I’d like, probably wasn’t watching the ball as well as I should be and probably played not a very good shot.
“The ball I got out on was a pretty poor shot, execution and shot selection probably wasn’t right, so I’ll learn from that and hopefully I can bat better in this Test.”
Having been dismissed flinching at one Ishant Sharma short ball in India, Clarke was again made to look uncomfortable by the height of Stuart Broad and Steven Finn at Brisbane, and acknowledged that may have been England’s intention.
“That might be their plan. They might try to bowl a bit back-of-a-length to sit me back before trying to come forward,” he said.
“I still thought Anderson bowled a really good length, top of off, through that corridor.
“But that could be England’s plan to me, and to a few of the other guys as well.
“But in Australia in the second innings, once the wickets even themselves out, it’s a pretty hard place to bowl short.”
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