Is Michael Clarke really the best cricket captain in the world?

It’s been tough work being Michael Clarke the last few weeks, but help is never too far away. Busying himself with a staunch defence of his friend on Monday, Shane Warne unwittingly hit upon a reasonable point for cricket fans to ponder. “We’ve got the best captain in the world,” Warne gushed to the surprise of no-one and with probably no great offence taken by the other contenders.

Without invoking his famous but probably worn-out script-writer, Warne continued that “a few big hundreds” were around the corner for Clarke. India being the touring Test side tasked with stopping that from happening, the latter prediction is about as controversial as claiming the Washington Generals might be in for a tough night on the boards.

But is Warne right about Clarke’s captaincy? At present it’s a field hardly spoiling for a fight. Perhaps a better one even lurks within the current Australian line-up. Clarke was arguably handicapped from the start with the squad he was given on the recent UAE misadventure, but his failings did highlight the claims of his opposite number, Misbah-ul-Haq as the world’s best skipper. Against all odds and to his eternal credit, Misbah continues to unite a once-splintered, scandal-plagued, under-resourced and homeless international side and now has them playing Test cricket that is both robust and joyous.

Others have claims too. Where Daniel Vettori and Ross Taylor each seemed to carry the weight of a country around with them in the New Zealand job, Brendon McCullum’s recovered from an underwhelming start to guide the Kiwis to three successive series wins for the first time in a decade. Like Clarke though in recent times, his own runs have come in a few great spurts with little else besides.

Tactically astute and growing into his role, Angelo Matthews hasn’t been at it long enough (ditto Hashim Amla for South Africa) to assess in great depth, but he’s only lost two of his first thirteen Tests in charge and just one of six series in that time – and that was to world No1 South Africa. Defeating England away was also a coup. That’s just on-field. To Australian eyes, assessing the struggle Matthews must have in side-stepping political land mines seems a little like deciphering an episode of Borgen without the subtitles.

Alastair Cook’s fortunes as England skipper have waxed and waned even more dramatically than Clarke’s for Australia since that time – not actually that long ago really – where he seemed untouchable. Even putting aside the fact that he’s both a victim of and contributor to a culture that has faltered so shambolically in the past 12 months, his shortcomings in the tactical and on-field component of the job are clear.

Fun while he lasted at Test level, Darren Sammy looked at first like the Karl Power of cricket captaincy but ended up almost universally admired. His replacement, Dinesh Ramdin, might not even have his job by the time this column is filed. India’s MS Dhoni is more of a brand ambassador than the leader of a cricket team. His problems with field placements and game sense combine with distractions off the field to hamper his cause.

Measurement of the relative merits of captains is a highly subjective exercise, but Warne’s confidence in Clarke’s run-making potential this summer rests on surer footings. The Aussie skipper’s oft-discussed spine could be permanently fused into one position, in the stooping arc of a cover drive perhaps, and that would still be the case.

Recent numbers are unflattering for sure and follow the feast or famine narrative that is often the fate of late-career captains, but before Clarke drew a total blank in the UAE the only series as captain in which he’d averaged below 40 was on the 2012 tour to the West Indies. There it was only batting cyborg Shiv Chanderpaul who averaged anything better than the 30s and that still wasn’t enough to rouse his dismal partners.

At this point the roll-call of series and result-shaping innings in Clarke’s dozen full Test series as captain is worth retracing and remembering for some perspective; 112 at Colombo to seal his first series win in 2011; the partially-obscured first-innings 151 that came before the calamity of ‘Cape Town 47’; 139 at Brisbane to pull a two-Test series out of the fire against New Zealand; 329 not out and all that in a colossal summer (629 runs at 125.2) at home against India; 576 more at 144 at home against world-conquering South Africa; that forgotten first-innings 130 at Chennai before the Aussies were beaten to a pulp in India in 2013; a vintage 187 at Old Trafford when the Ashes were still mathematically alive in 2013; 148 at Adelaide as Australia began their march to reclaiming the urn; perhaps greatest of all, the bruising, breathtaking and undefeated 161 at Cape Town to crown Australia’s summer of domination.

And that’s another thing; Australia weren’t dominating anything or anyone when Clarke took the captaincy. In recent times Mitchell Johnson and Ryan Harris helped turned the tables in grand style, while Darren Lehmann cajoled better and more consistent things from David Warner. Clarke might have occasionally skated on thin ice in pressing that recently-acquired advantage home so aggressively but with frustration so close in the rearview mirror it was perhaps understandable. He might be well beyond his salad days now but what batsman of his physical condition wouldn’t be at 33?

It barely needs repeating that when he came into the captaincy, Clarke didn’t benefit from anything close to consensus approval among the pundits and plebs. Reasons for this ranged from the near-sighted and superficial (the cars, the women, the hair, the clothes) to the more pragmatic (being the sole heir to Ricky Ponting’s Australian captaincy at that point was a little like being the funniest member of the Saturday Night Live cast; perhaps not the tick of approval it used to be).

Thus for a while – it’s probably still the case – we didn’t think enough of Australian Test cricket under Clarke because his leadership was borne more of necessity than design and at its signature lows (the constantly-deepening farce of the 2013 Indian tour; Mickey Arthur’s resultant sacking; the away Ashes loss that followed) the state of Australian cricket looked as cringeworthy and unsalvageable as the dark early days of the Border era.

The fact is though that until Australia’s forgettable recent trip to the UAE, Clarke had won six of his eleven Test series as skipper, losing just three and sharing honors in two. The three men who preceded him in the job grabbed the baton in a gold medal-winning position, Clarke had taken off with the rest of the field sprinting clear.

In On Top Down Under, his peerless appraisal of Australia’s Test captains, Ray Robinson noted that MA ‘Monty’ Noble, who as national captain was jeered at by fans that his initials stood for ‘Mary Ann’, “was big enough not to mind.” Only Clarke could say whether the latest spate of jibes have taken any great toll, but his critics have been quick to forget how adept he is at stealing back the lead.