Could it really be that the only thing Alastair Cook and Michael Clarke have in common is that they both once looked pretty comfortable posing with barely any clothes on?
Cook did so, with James Anderson and Stuart Broad, to raise awareness for male cancer in Cosmopolitan magazine.
Clarke did it as the celebrity model for an underwear brand. Some might choose to draw contrasts from the separate motivations. But ultimately, being able to comfortably show off your body to the world probably says the same thing at some level.
How counter-intuitive is it, though, that that is the one thing they share? It is so easy to focus on what makes this pair of captains so different. Cook is grey and dull, safe and sound; he is the steady but gargantuan run-accumulator. He is what annoys Shane Warne about the modern game.
Clarke, on the other hand, is all colour. He is a risk-taker, the prettier but equally gargantuan run-maker; he is exactly what excites Warne about the modern game.
There is a kernel of truth in some of these, but much easy stereotyping, too.
Overall, though, the contrast is far greater than is evident in their numbers. Just four Tests, one hundred, 500 runs and three runs per innings separate the pair.
The contrast is further and fatally distorted through the prism of Warne, who for so many seems to represent an idealised way in which cricket should be played.
It is true that the pair begin in Cardiff at starkly different crossroads in their careers. Before the England squad flew out to Spain for a short training camp two weeks ago, Cook conceded his future as captain was uncertain.
“I don’t know. Ever since we lost the Ashes 5-0 in Australia, I have taken every series as an individual event,” he said.
Cook lost the one-day captaincy before the World Cup. The fallout from the Kevin Pietersen saga still hovers like a bad smell. Around him, the England set-up has undergone significant change, so that even as he has started scoring runs again, an Ashes loss could heap further, unbearable pressure on him.
“Come August I will sit down with everyone, with Trevor” Bayliss, the new England coach, “and we will plot a path forward, or we will see. But just before an Ashes series is not the right time to talk,” Cook said.
Clarke arrives on the cusp of cementing a legacy-rich captaincy. His reign has not had quite the success of leaders such as Steve Waugh, Mark Taylor or even Ricky Ponting. Losses, and crushing ones at that, in India and the UAE prevent him from being seen in quite the same awe-inspiring light. In fact, he does not even have an Ashes win in England, as player or captain, on his CV yet.
In revitalising Australia after the last Ashes in England and winning a World Cup this year, though, he has attained a kind of exalted status. His handling of the trauma of Phil Hughes’s death helped.
But it his reconnection to an older, nastier, hard-as-nails style of Australian cricket that has really endeared him to the public. It may ultimately come to define him.
That leads to the final point about captains, and about the essential fickleness of how their work is judged. They can only ever be as good as the players they have alongside them. Under Clarke, Mitchell Johnson has rediscovered himself. Steve Smith has flourished. Josh Hazlewood and Mitchell Marsh have emerged.
Cook has had to oversee the effective end of one era and had to try to forge a new one. That is a formidable task at the best of times, let alone in as polluted an atmosphere as the one in which Cook has had to operate.
Only now is he beginning to come upon a group of young individuals who, together, have the makings of a good side. As much as this Ashes might be said to be about the captains, it will also be about the players they have at their disposal.
By that measure, it might have come just a little too early in the cycle of this England side.
osamiuddin@thenational.ae
MITCHELL STARC PROMISES NO RESPITE FROM ‘SOME GOOD HEAT’
* AFP
LONDON // Mitchell Starc has told England there will be no let-up when they face Australia’s pace attack in the first Ashes Test in Cardiff starting tomorrow.
The left-arm fast bowler took nine wickets in Australia’s final warm-up match as they defeated county side Essex over the weekend, and Starc is now set to be an increasingly important figure following the injury-enforced retirement of fellow paceman Ryan Harris.
But with Australia’s squad also including another left-arm fast bowler in Mitchell Johnson, as well as emerging right-arm seamer Josh Hazlewood, Starc, 25, says he is looking forward to seeing England’s top-order batsmen unsettled by pace and movement.
“Having some guys who can bowl some good heat, and we can swing it, it is always good to see those batsmen jumping around and making life hard for them,” Starc said.
“When you have a few guys who can consistently bowl over 140kph, that is great to have because there is no respite.
“We will have Mitch Johnson coming in, who has terrorised England in Australia, then Josh and I are following on and can hopefully both push it up a decent pace as well.”
Starc, Australia’s man of the tournament when they won this year’s World Cup on home soil, added that he had increased his pace and that would help him combat the effect of unresponsive pitches.
“I have probably gained a yard or two, but for me it is that consistency, which is what I was questioned about for a long time and tried to find,” he said.
“There is that confidence in myself now that in a pretty dead, lifeless wicket I can produce consistently.
“Now over the last six months, it is really getting to the point where it needs to be in terms of being able to swing the ball for a while.
“It is all merging into one and I am starting to see results.”
Amid all the talk of “sledging”, Starc said he had little time for verbal spats with opposition players.
“I am not one to chirp the batsmen. I am just trying to concentrate on bowling and do my own thing,” he said.
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