New Australia captain Michael Clarke is an astute cricket tactician, but will need to be more “formal and firm” in his man-management, according to spin-bowling great Shane Warne.
Clarke was appointed Australia’s 43rd Test captain on Wednesday in place of Ricky Ponting, who had resigned a day earlier, and departs with his first squad to Bangladesh for three one-dayers on Monday.
Warne, who took 708 Test wickets in a glittering career and remains a highly influential voice in Australian cricket, said Clarke, a close friend, was the right man for the job but would need to further develop some of his skills.
“As far as a leader of men goes, this is where I think Michael can improve,” he wrote in his column for yesterday’s Daily Telegraph. “The way he conducts himself is laid back and fun by nature, but as skipper he will need to become a bit more formal and firm.”
“In dealing with his team, I believe he has their respect as a player, but now it’s time to earn that respect as a leader — firstly from the extended Australian cricket family and then the public,” Warne said.
In other areas, though, Warne said he thought Clarke, who turns 30 today, was already the finished article.
“His communication skills remind me of a young Mark Taylor, who was the best captain I played under,” he wrote.
“He works well with the bowlers and we don’t see him running up to them after every ball — that’s a good thing by the way — or looking like a cop directing traffic,” he said. “Some captains like that because it’s a power trip — look at me, I’m in charge.”
Warne, who never captained his country in Tests because of off-field indiscretions, said he thought Clarke’s style of captaincy would suit a team that does not enjoy the ascendancy that Australia had in Warne’s heyday.
“His tactics are spot on and his style of play is aggressive,” Warne wrote. “With a team in transition, it’s important to put players under pressure. That is, you have to risk losing to win, not be happy to not lose and draw.”
“That way the players learn how to win and learn by their mistakes. You can’t just be defensive, sit back and hope someone will make something happen. You must be pro-active and set the ground rules out from day one,” he said.
“We know we won’t be No. 1 again in any form of the game for some time but if the attitude of the team is ‘try to be the best we can be’, then the current group can’t do any more than that,” he said.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier