Remember the last great power shift in Australian cricket’s on-field leadership? It was almost 10 years ago. Selectors showed their hand, they dumped an out of form and out of favour Steve Waugh from the one-day captaincy, one year out from the World Cup.
Steve Waugh! The great Steve Waugh! The man who played such an integral part in winning the World Cup on English soil just a few years earlier.
It helped usher in a period of incredible success. Sometimes harsh calls work best.
The man who would assume control was Ricky Ponting. Two years later he would take the helm at Test level as well, but his leadership reign took shape in rather unique circumstances early last decade.
With Waugh on the outer, there appeared to be no obvious candidate to replace him. Instead, three very good ones.
The board of Cricket Australia, in its infinite wisdom, decided to run job interviews to choose its new captain. Ponting, Shane Warne and Adam Gilchrist were all short-listed.
The process was bizarre, undignified and divisive. Their best batsman, their best bowler, their pioneer wicket-keeper. The spine of the team each lobbying to be the chief vertebrae.
All of them, summoned to the corridors of power, one by one, to state their case for the armband. Media crews camped out to get the before and after shot and a grab from the boys making one last campaign speech.
It just wasn’t cricket. Fortunately, those days are long gone. The 2011 succession plan was well entrenched. It has been for several years now.
I interviewed former coach John Buchanan and Ponting himself as part of a story I did on Michael Clarke in mid-2007. There was a central theme. Clarke was the best man to assume control of the side in the post-Ponting era.
The wheels were in motion before any pedals had been pushed. Eventually Clarke would take control of the Twenty20 side and be elevated to the Test vice-captaincy during the Gilchrist retirement wake.
Occasional one-day duties followed and then inevitably, Clarke led the side onto the SCG in the new year, becoming Australia’s 43rd test captain.
The grooming had been done. The product was being applied. When Ponting’s bombshell was dropped on Tuesday, the Clarke ordination was merely a formality.
Despite my initial scepticism, the timing appears right. Ponting’s legacy deserves respect. It does not need running commentary or dissection by people removed from the squad like myself. But I do sense a freshness and zest in Clarke’s appointment that may breathe new life into a side desperately in need of it.
I have had my moments with Ponting but by and large I cannot criticise his accessibility to the media. That said, I have never seen him work a room like Clarke did on Wednesday.
He afforded each and every media outlet personal space and time; hard news, light entertainment, current affairs, radio, television, online and print.
He was still going by the time Toadfish was cracking gags with his Neighbours on his Ramsay Street driveway. Some journalists were even given interviews they didn’t request.
He joked and laughed, posed for photos, and talked social media. It’s all part of the Clarke charm. A new approach that surely won over many of his detractors.
In 2011, Clarke has more in common with his teammates than the man he’s replacing. He inherits a team more interested in tweeting, sun-baking and online video games than sight-seeing and philanthropy.
The old days of the Nerds vs the Julios no longer exists. The Nerds are extinct. Clarke is the leader of the gang. There’s no doubt he has won over his peers. I sense his appointment will help win over a doubtful, cynical Australian public before too long as well.
Will Michael Clarke be able to win over public opinion as captain of Australia and will he prove a successful skipper?
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