SPIRO's Six and Out: Clarke's successor needs to be identified now

Michael Clarke is going to struggle to play cricket in the next year or so. That is if he lasts that long.

This is the time to start preparing for when he cannot play Test cricket anymore, or if he decides to stand down from the captaincy and makes his Test career a match-by-match proposition.

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Anyone who suffers from chronic back troubles, as Clarke does, knows how crippling it is when the discs align incorrectly or when a sudden movement jerks the spine and starts a back spasm. You feel like your back is cut in half, and that each half is lined by a sharp blade that cuts into the nerves and muscles causing incredible pain.

The way that Clarke continued on his innings after collapsing the day before with a total of 60 on the board revealed what a great batsman, and player of supreme courage, he is.

The Australian ran a fascinating table, Tests per century, to show just how impressive Clarke’s Test career has been. Don Bradman (who else?) leads the list with a century every in 1.79 Tests he played, Matt Hayden made a century in 3.43 Test, Greg Chappell 3.65: Neil Harvey 3.76, Michael Clarke 3.85 Tests.

Like all those great batsmen above him, Clarke has scored his centuries (28 in 108 Tests) in an attractive manner and at a quick rate.

He is going to be very hard to replace as a batsman and as a captain. In both categories he must be rated at the highest level.

2. Who should replace Michael Clarke as the next long-term captain of Australia?
The popular choice to replace Clarke is Steve Smith. He is also, apparently, favoured by the hierarchy at Cricket Australia when that time comes.

Ian Chappell, however, favours Dave Warner. Watching Warner mature as a person and as a Test player in the last year or so has been a pleasure for cricket lovers.

He, like Smith, fulfils the age-old Australian criterion that he is a certainty to be selected in the best Test XI.

You can see why Warner appeals to Chappell. There is the element of the anti-establishment about him. He has rough edges. He has the swagger of a real man. He is direct and forthright, on and off the field.

Smith, on the other hand, is more like Clarke. There is something of the metro about his personality and his play, even though, again like Clarke, he is a proud product of Sydney’s western suburbs.

An ancient like me remembers when decades ago the Australian cricket bosses had to decide on two candidates who in many ways resembled Smith and Warner: Richie Benaud and Neil Harvey.

Harvey had better credentials than Benaud. He was already primed to be one of the greats, being a prodigy in Bradman’s side that went through England undefeated. But for reasons that have never been really explained, Harvey missed out on the captaincy, first to Ian Craig and then, when Craig had to pull out of cricket with an debilitating illness, to Benaud.

Benaud, with his open unbuttoned shirt, his stunning good looks, his acute cricketing brains, his innate sportsmanship, and his ability to rise to the toughest of occasions, raised the image of the baggy green, and the game of cricket itself. His elevation to the captaincy, before his greatness as a bowler had been revealed, is a selection success story that is overlooked.

We now see the selection as inevitable. And his success as a captain and player inevitable, too. But it was anything but that at the time. It was a matter of ‘cometh the hour, cometh the man’.

We saw another side to the greatness of Richie Benaud in the moving tribute he voiced before the Test to Phillip Hughes: “Rest in peace, son.” When I heard the weathered voice, I thought of those last songs by Johnny Cash, sung in a voice suffused with the ups and downs of a long life.

This tribute was Benaud playing his last great role as cricket’s tribal elder, his service to a game he has adorned, on and off the field, for over 60 years.

In the contest between Smith and Warner, Smith is the Benaud-type captain, and Warner the Harvey. I reckon this is the way the Cricket Australia heavies see the contest, too.

3. Steve Smith needs to be groomed for the captaincy now
If Michael Clarke does not make the next Test – he did not come back on to the field immediately after the tea break – then Brad Haddin should be the captain.

Haddin is mature, experienced, is the current vice-captain, but is not in the frame as the next long-term captain.

There has been a push for Shane Watson to do the job but his position up to the next Ashes series is in the balance. He just does not look the part at number three. He seems to lack the flexibility of, say, Ricky Ponting, Australia’s best since Don Bradman. Watson is much to statuesque in his method for my liking.

Should Watson be selected as an opener? But what about Chris Rogers whose place, too, has become moot.

Whatever position Watson is selected to fill, he needs to entrench himself in the Test side without the burden of having to captain the side.

This leaves Haddin as the obvious short-term captain, the way Neil Harvey performed the role in a winning Test at Lords when Richie Benaud’s shoulder forced him out of the Test.

If Haddin does get the nod, then Steve Smith should be made vice-captain. This gives him a taste of the job, without having to gulp down all the responsibilities just yet.

4. I am loving the Channel Nine coverage of the Test
In the past it has been fashionable to insist that the best way to watch the cricket on Channel Nine is to have the picture on, the sound down and the radio commentary playing. I used to do this when Peter Roebuck was one of the radio talents. But for this Adelaide Test I’ve watched and listened to the Channel Nine coverage, with growing pleasure.

I am writing this after afternoon tea on the third day, with Ian Chappell, Ian Healy and Brett Lee doing the commentary honours. Healy is talking knowledgeably about the reverse swing, backed up with specifics from Lee. Chappell is always good value with his laconic comments and shrewd insights.

The graphics used by Channel Nine have really enhanced the watching pleasure too.

5. Martin Crowe’s call for cricket to ‘calm down’ has been answered
There was a lot of talk about not bowling bouncers in the aftermath of the Phillip Hughes tragedy. But wiser views have prevailed.

There has not been a orgy of bouncers at the Adelaide Test, but this is probably due more to the placid nature of the pitch than to a determination of the bowlers to move back from intimidating the batsmen.

As Brett Lee pointed out in one of his commentary spots, bowling the short ball takes a lot out of the bowlers, especially on a benign pitch like Adelaide on the third day.

Mitchell Johnson’s first ball to Virat Kohli hit him on the helmet. The concern of all the players, especially Johnston, was paplable. Johnston walked back to his mark with his eyes pools of concern.

But Kohli was unabashed. In his 90s he smashed Johnston’s short ball as if he was playing in the back yard, rather than in a Test match.

When Martin Crowe wrote that cricket needs to “calm down”, he was not referring to the use of bouncers. He acknowledged that they are part and parcel of the game. What he was referring to was “the tone of the game”. Cricket, he argued, “is not the uncouth WWF or heavyweight boxing. You should be respectful. You can’t threaten an opponent to get ready for a broken arm”.

We know that this last reference was to a sledge made by Michael Clarke during an Ashes series.

This type of sledging and more importantly the incessant and nasty verballing that Australian teams have indulged in for a couple of decades is what has to be taken out of the game. Hopefully this has happened.

It was a nice gesture, too, that after Steve Smith smashed a ball back at Indian fast bowler Varun Aaron, nearly taking off Aaron’s head, he made an apology to the bowler. Long may this way of playing the game prevail.

6. Where is the next Australian batting prodigy?
One of the glories of Australian cricket has been the brilliant way batting prodigies have burst into the national XI and then continued to make their mark in Test cricket.

Where is the next batting prodigy? And in the absence of such a talent, what has caused the flow of young talent to dry up? Is there too much emphasis put on the shorter forms of the game?