Michael Clarke may just reach the fitness time limit to lead the Australia national team into the International Cricket Council World Cup 2015 starting 14th February, even as many Cricket Australia (CA) cricket officials are thin king deeply appointing Steven Smith as full-time skipper after the 50-over the International Cricket Council World Cup 2015 .
Michael Clarke’s reoccurring fitness problems and his continuous truancy during India’s tour has insisted Cricket Australia (CA) to juggle with a couple of captaincy options in the Test and One Day Internationals and it is learnt that the cricket officials who are the decision makers, are eager for a enduring change of guard before this 2015 Ashes tour of England. Senior officials in the Australian board say that a stable condition discussed is for Michael Clarke to stay in the squad, with few disagree that as a world class batsman he remains in Australia’s best XI when fit, but play under the captaincy of Steven Smith, According to Fairfax Media.
On Tuesday James Sutherland, the CA chief executive though said of Micahel Clarke that he kept “a huge amount of confidence in Michael as a player, captain and a leader”.
But if reports are to be believed then there is dread over public positions taken by the skipper in the previous 3 months and cover about the fattening distance between him and Australian team players. Both Cricket Australia’s Team Performance manager Pat Howard and Sutherland have contradicted that there had been conversations about Michael Clarke being replaced. Any conclusion on the captaincy would have to be staunched by the Cricket Australia board, but would be based on the guidance of the selection board, led by Rod Marsh.
Clarke said to the Fairfax Media this week that he wanted to continue in the captaincy long term and he was quoted saying: “I think I’ve earned that respect.”
When steve Smith was asked about the captaincy change he replied: “It’s been really good to take over temporarily and have a taste of it and I really enjoyed it. I don’t really like to think about it too much regarding the future but I just like to stay as level headed as I can and take each day as it comes.”