Ashes 2011 Read Online Free PDF

of some players for serving their IPL paymasters.
    This being the way of things, the article set rolling the 24–hour juggernaut of talk radio, television and Twitter, gaining rather than losing momentum from the litany of denials. An opinion poll in a weekend paper proved Clarke's approval rating to have slumped to Obama levels, with only 28 per cent of respondents preferring him to follow Ponting – Cameron White had more supporters.
    In one respect, Clarke should feel reassured. If his chief rivals to Australian cricket's number one job are either barely in the side (North) or out of it (White), then it is surely his for the asking. Yet not since Australian cricket's anni horribili in the 1980s, when at one stage a lobby for Dirk Wellham thrust him into the role of Allan Border's deputy for exactly five days, can I recall advocacy for a candidate for national captaincy outside the starting XI. Clarke can be thankful he's not competing in The X-Factor.
    At the very least, it is a poor start to the summer's relations between the Australian cricketers and their media, who mix at the best of times like oil and water. Where the relatively wealthy English cricket press has a strong core of well-credentialled ex-players, Australia's journalists tend to be all-sport roustabouts specialising temporarily whom players keep at arm's length with the aid of a courteous but protective public affairs cadre and a phalanx of zealous agents. The players go through their motions grudgingly, bound only by a contracted minimum of appearances: there was amusement at Cricket Australia earlier this year when Clarke asked that a glossy mag photoshoot be deemed one of his gigs.
    Team members are consequently seldom seen other than in the regimented and formulaic environment of media conferences, where the questions hardly rise above the level of the cricket equivalent of their favourite colour and what's on their iPod. Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath, superb extempore performers, are sorely missed; there is certainly nobody in the Australian setup as consistently engaging as Graeme Swann.
    The results are plain to see. In coverage terms, the summer game languishes by comparison with the football codes, masterful at promoting their players even out of season – the Australian Football League's annual draft, for example, will squeeze cricket off the sport pages when it is held on the Gold Coast next week. And cricket writers fed up with mushroom treatment start speculating, as they seem to have here, on the basis of an unsourced mutter, a sideways glance and a theory or two.
    Is Clarke's position as Ponting's dauphin in jeopardy? Is his place in his team-mates' esteem secure? The rumours predate this summer, dating back to a widely reported dressing room contretemps between Clarke and Simon Katich after last year's Sydney Test, when the former's keenness to slip away with his celebrity girlfriend offended the latter's obeisance to post-match rituals.
    Rumours resumed after Clarke's muted tour of India. Other players were said to have 'issues' with him. Perhaps the highest kite flown was a newspaper article suggesting that South Australian Callum Ferguson – five centuries in forty-eight first-class games and an average of 36 with Adelaide Oval as his home pitch – was an Australian captain in the making.
    Frankly, who can tell? Dressing rooms are curious places. Dissimilar personalities can get on. Too-similar individuals can clash. A losing team need not always be on the point of insurrection, and a winning team need not be concordant – for proof, see the Yorkshire XIs of the 1960s, recently brought to life in Andrew Collomosse's excellent new book Magnificent Seven. Steve Waugh and Shane Warne won a lot of Tests together without liking each other all that much.
    Nor is it as though the Australian media have an ear to the dressing room keyhole. Thanks to Cricket Australia's public affairs cordon sanitaire, they have their ear to