Australian cricket captain’s have always led their team from the front, be it Allan Border, Steve Waugh, Ricky Ponting or their newest captain Michael Clarke. Ever since Clarke took over the captaincy full time from Ricky Ponting back in 2011 he has appeared to relish the challenge and has been arguably their best batsman by some distance as his test match batting average of 66.10 as captain compared to his average of 46.97 before the captaincy would attest. In a recent article in All Out Cricket magazine comparing the England captain Alastair Cook to Michael Clarke using Opta data, the figures show that since Cook became full time England captain on August 29 2012, Clarke and Cook are the two leading test match run scorers in the world. Michael Clarke leads the way comfortably having scored 1178 runs in this period at an average of 90.6, while Cook has managed 969 runs at 60.6. Clearly then Michael Clarke is the key to this Australian test team and the main man England need to target if they’re to win another Ashes series. This post will attempt to break down Clarke’s batting statistics against England in previous test series’ to demonstrate areas of strength and potential weaknesses in the Australian captain’s batting.
Looking at Clarke’s test match statistics for his career it is clear to see that he is a top class batsman, with an average above 50 and his conversion rate of 50’s into 100’s both being signs of this. Clarke’s highest score in a test match came in 2012 when he scored a massive 329 not out against India at his home ground, the Sydney Cricket Ground. He went on to make another double century later in that series and in the following test series against South Africa (then the number 1 team in test cricket) made 259 not out in the first test and 230 in the next test match. It appears that since taking the captaincy on, that when Clarke makes it to 100 he generally manages to kick on and make it a big score.
Test Match Career Stats
The comparison between Clarke’s test match record as captain and not as captain also demonstrates how he has taken to the added responsibilities of captaincy and used it to become an even better player than he was before. As shown below in the chart there is a clear increase in his batting average (from 46.97 to 66.1) and in strike rate (from 52.96 to 61.89).
Comparison of average and strike rate as captain and not as captain
In terms of Clarke’s performances against England in Ashes test series’ he has played in 20 matches batting in 32 innings and has scored 1365 runs at an average of 45.50. He has scored 6 half centuries and 4 centuries demonstrating a fairly good conversion rate of 50’s into 100’s. While his batting average against England is slightly lower than his career average (6.83 lower to be exact), Clarke’s strike rate in Ashes series’ (55.71) is fairly close to his career strike rate (55.81) demonstrating that Clarke scores his runs at a consistent rate of about 55 runs per 100 balls.
Clarke has been dismissed by bowler’s 29 times in 33 innings with 3 not outs and 1 run out, the pie chart below shows that the most common dismissal for Clarke is caught with 33% of his dismissals in Ashes tests coming from this method. He has been caught behind 30% of the time and bowled 17% and LBW 17% of his dismissals.
When facing England’s bowlers in Ashes series’ Clarke has been dismissed 6 times by England’s opening bowler James Anderson being caught 3 times, caught behind by the keeper on 2 occasions and LBW 1 time. Other England bowlers in the 2013 Ashes squad that have previously dismissed Clarke in test matches include Stuart Broad, Graeme Swann, Tim Bresnan, Graham Onions, Steven Finn and Kevin Pietersen (See the table below for methods of dismissal).
Bowlers dismissal breakdown
Clearly the table above demonstrates that seam bowlers appear to have more success against Michael Clarke with the most common method of dismissal being caught or caught behind, this will encourage England’s seam bowlers as Clarke is known to enjoy driving the ball and in swinging conditions it could increase the likelihood of the bowlers finding an edge to slip or to the keeper. Interestingly England’s spinners don’t appear to have dismissed Clarke particularly often with Giles, Panesar, Swann and Pietersen all having bowled at the Australian captain over the course of 20 test matches and only managing to dismiss him 4 times in 33 innings. Clarke is widely regarded as an excellent player of spin bowling, using his feet to get down to the pitch of the ball to negate the spin and put the bowler off their line and length allowing him to rock back and hit the short balls. This is shown below in the highlights video of Michael Clarke batting against Spin. As you can see Clarke uses his feet often to the spinners forcing them to change the length and bowl shorter allowing for more ‘4’ balls and stopping the bowler from flighting the ball, also reducing the amount the ball will spin.
When facing spin bowling in England, Clarke appears to score the majority of his runs in front of square on the offside (as shown in the wagon wheel below). This is visible in both the video clip above and the wagon wheel below as Clarke would appear to prefer to use his feet to get to the pitch of the ball and play straight instead of attempting to sweep the spinners.
Wagon Wheel vs Spin in England
In terms of scoring areas in ashes test matches for Clarke, the majority of his runs come through the cover area on the offside (33.26%) against all types of bowling, whilst he scores 20.98% of his runs through the midwicket region (as shown in the figure below). Unfortunately the batting wagon wheels from the 2005 test series are not available so the figure only includes the 2009 Ashes test matches in England to demonstrate where Clarke scored his runs on English pitches. The figure shows that Clarke scores over 60% of his runs on the offside and highlights the two major scoring areas of his.
Scoring zones against all bowling in Ashes tests 2009
Breaking this analysis down further, Clarke’s scoring zones against the English seam bowlers is 2009 show that midwicket and cover are still the areas where he scores the majority of his runs but the runs are a bit more evenly spread with 30% coming through the covers and 23% coming through midwicket. The offside/legside distribution is a bit more even against just seam bowlers also, with 56% of his runs in 2009 coming on the offside, and 44% of his runs coming through the legside.
Scoring zones against Seam bowling in the 2009 Ashes series.
Whilst against Spin bowling Clarke clearly favours the offside with over 40% of his runs coming through the covers, and another 23% coming through the mid-off region of the pitch. This demonstrates that Clarke likes to play straight, utilising his feet in an attempt to negate the spin allowing him to play the ball through the offside.
Scoring zones vs Spin in England 2009
Looking even more closely at Michael Clarke’s Ashes record for test matches in England his record is still very good, with a batting average of 48.94 from 10 tests and a highest score of 136 at the ‘home of cricket’ Lords. The first test of the series will be played at Trent Bridge starting on the 10th July, Clarke has played one test match at this ground in 2005, scoring 92 runs with a high score of 56 and an average of 46.00. Clarke was dismissed both times in this match once LBW and once caught behind. The second test match of the series will be played at Lords, as mentioned earlier this is the ground that Clarke has scored his highest test match score against England. Having played here twice Clarke appears to enjoy batting here scoring 239 runs at an average of 59.75. Clarke has managed to score 1 fifty and 1 century at this ground in 4 innings, clearly it will be important to dismiss Clarke early and England’s bowlers have been able to bowl Clarke twice at Lord’s out of a total of 5 times he has been bowled in all tests against England. He has been caught once and LBW once at Lord’s in the past also. The third test of the series will be played at Old Trafford and Clarke has played here once in 2005. In that game he batted further down the order than usual, coming in at number 8 and number 7 in the 2 innings and scoring just the 46 runs in the game. Obviously one game is not enough to demonstrate any trends in run scoring but it gives an idea of how he has performed on the ground in the past. The methods of dismissal in this test were caught behind and bowled. The fourth test of the series will be played at Chester-Le-Street and this is a ground that Clarke has never played a test match on. Finally the fifth and final test will be played at the Oval where Clarke has played twice before. Clarke has had 3 innings over the course of the two games and has appeared to struggle in both games with just 28 runs coming from 3 completed innings at an average of just 9.33. He has been dismissed in 3 different methods in his innings here, being caught, LBW and run out.
Clearly then Michael Clarke is key to this Australian batting line up and their success here in England during the Ashes series. He has demonstrated that the captaincy has not negatively impacted upon his batting in recent series’ with improvements in his career average and strike rate. He has also demonstrated great ability at playing spin as shown during the Australian’s recent tour of India and the fact that England spinners have only managed to dismiss him 4 times in 20 test matches show that it is perhaps best to attack Clarke with seam bowling early in his innings with the hope of getting an edge to slip or to the keeper as these have been the two most common dismissals he has suffered during Ashes test matches. James Anderson will be key for England as he is not only their best seam bowler, he has also been the most effective bowler against Michael Clarke in previous test matches, dismissing him a total of 6 times. England will more than likely attempt to get Clarke driving the ball while it is swinging to get the edge behind as he tries to score through his favoured cover region. All of this leads to an interesting summer ahead as one of the world’s premier batsman at the moment faces off against arguably England’s best ever bowler James Anderson and his colleagues.
Sporting Performance Stats & Insights 