Here is the thing about captains of the Australian cricket team, especially but not exclusively, the modern lineage. If there is a species more cussed it has yet to be discovered.
Bear that in mind as the fourth Test begins at Trent Bridge, to which the build-up has been firmly dominated by questions of Michael Clarke’s form and future as Australia captain. The former, it cannot be denied, is not pretty. The latter, in many interpretations, is bleak.
One columnist has said outright Clarke is finished, others have insinuated similarly and, to be fair, without context, these are not outrageous thoughts to have, even if Clarke dismissed them as “a load of rubbish” in a column of his own.
Various Statsguru searches all point to one truth: recent runs have dried up. One search has him averaging 28 in 15 innings since October last year, with just one 50-plus score.
At 34 he is no cricket geriatric, but he is into that phase where time is urgent and limited. His back condition means a few years can be added on and, if he does win the Ashes, he has little left to achieve.
So the speculation is not as rubbish as Clarke might think.
Yet, given that this is an Australian cricket captain, all of it seems the obligatory preamble to Clarke returning to form at Trent Bridge. Even if it is not a particularly auspicious ground for such rebirth — the generally swinging conditions have usually been too much for Clarke in his two Tests here.
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None of this matters as much as the fact that Clarke is an Australian cricket captain and deep crisis is when Australian captains, by nature, respond.
It is why they are the most gloried of all cricket’s captains. In such moments, form and technical issues matter far less than the internal workings of a deeper core.
Mark Taylor arrived in England in 1997 in such poor form, goes the story, he was sledged even by the immigration officer.
“Ah, Mr Taylor, the captain,” the officer is thought to have said.
“That’s right,” replied Taylor.
“But for how long?” the officer asked.
Taylor ground out a hundred in the first Test. Australia lost that, but Taylor led them to a comfortable series triumph.
Steve Waugh was not under the same kind of pressure in 2001. But when he injured his calf in the third Test, it was assumed his series was over. The series was won so there was no need for him to return.
Against nearly all expectations, he did return, and on one leg, pretty much, scored an unbeaten 157.
Little wonder Waugh thinks Ricky Ponting’s 156 at Old Trafford in 2005 was the making of him as captain. It was an innings in Waugh’s mould — rescuing, against odds and expectations, in a time of personal and collective crisis.
Allan Border, before all of them, made an entire career of such traits.
That resilience has always been apparent in Clarke, even though to many he seemed an outlier in the line of Australian captains. Sure, the ostensibly metrosexual moorings, the bling lifestyle once suggested a thinness of purpose, but Clarke on the field has always carried substance.
In fact, there is an old-fashioned sense to his batting that has not been celebrated enough. You could put a handkerchief around his neck, a cap on his head, turn the TV to black and white and nothing about it would seem amiss.
His bat does not look like an object of violence, or a bludgeoning force. Instead, in his hands it looks to be from an older age when bats were thinner, narrower, starved of bluster. Then, just connecting with the ball was a wonder.
Some days, his cover drive looks straight out of pre-war cricket, not reliant on modern power, but neither purely on timing. It is borne mostly of a strong-jawed sense of duty, that yes, this ball simply must go to the boundary.
When set, it becomes difficult to place him in a particular era. Instead there is an eternal sense of greatness to it, lightly felt but there for sure. We are likely to feel it again soon.
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