Clarke's Gripe a Symptom of the Stresses in Modern Game

As illusions go, Michael Clarke’s shattering of the “mateship” myth,long thought to have been the power beneath Australia’s Baggy Green, is right up there with the exposing of Father Christmas.

Clarke has an autobiography out which appears to be settling as many scores off the field as on. Sequenced and condensed to maximum effect for talk-show fodder, the book suggests there was disharmony throughout Clarke’s time in the team with special opprobrium saved for Shane Watson, his one-time vice-captain.

Watson, a decent all-rounder who rivaled Clarke as the metro sexual cricketer king of Sydney (after he moved there from Queensland), was part of a cabal of players Clarke referred to as a “tumour”.

Players, who, if left unchecked, Clarke reckoned, would cause a cancer within the team.

It is hyperbolic stuff but while the language is emotive, and critical, is it surprising that cricketers who spend an inordinate amount of time in each other’s company don’t always get on?

England have endured their own difficulties with players like Kevin Pietersen, while most teams in history will be able to point to at least one awkward sod within a dressing room who doesn’t quite fit the team ethic.

Attitudes towards these “difficult” players tends to vary, especially in degrees of condemnation, depending on whether they fall before or after the advent of central contracts, which in England occurred 16 years ago in 2000.

Before central contracts, England players were beholden to county teams which became their quasi-family.

Only on an overseas tour would they spend much time in each other’s company as England players.