Tactically Clarke is a great captain, certainly better than Cook. Where he lacks is in the building of a united dressing room. Too many Aussie players seem to play for themselves first and not for the team which is never a recipe for success.
Quote from: Villan For Life on November 04, 2013, 11:46:52 AMTactically Clarke is a great captain, certainly better than Cook. Where he lacks is in the building of a united dressing room. Too many Aussie players seem to play for themselves first and not for the team which is never a recipe for success.This is my point, Cook has better players so he doesn't need to use aggressive tactics to win games. Clarke has no choice but to go ultra-aggressive at the first hint of weakness because his team is poor, so which is the better captain based on that?
I think it helps to have a really strong side or a fairly weak side to be an aggressive captain. The great Aussie side could do it and just blow teams away, the team Clarke captains now has no real choice but to be aggressive in order to engineer opportunities. England are in between those two sides, we're pretty good so we can't really blow teams away but there's no real need to be wreckless either.
England won toss and are batting against Australia 'A'. 4-0 3 oversTeam: Cook, Carberry, Trott, Pietersen, Root, Ballance, Prior, Swann, Tremlett, Anderson.Bell rested which just leaves Bairstow and Panesar who have not featured on tour so far.