Test captain Michael Clarke thought he would be dropped as captain if his team lost the Ashes in Australia The contest over Clarke's public image seems never-ending. It's not really in Michael Clarke to look down in the dumps, but in August at the Marriott Northampton, a quiet hotel outside a quiet town, he went close. The Australian team had just hit its low point of the Ashes tour in Durham, losing eight wickets in two hours after being on the cusp of its first Test win of the year. It was all the lower for Clarke because the team had shown signs of improvement since losing at Trent Bridge and Lord's. He couldn't understand, or couldn't accept, what seemed obvious from the outside: that his batting order lacked the self-belief to overcome England's bowlers in conditions that favoured them. He knew Australia would win the Ashes again, but confessed that he didn't know if he would be part of it. We were called the worst Australian team ever when we went to England, and now in Australia, being 3-0 up, this is being called the best Ashes win ever. "I'm an extremely positive person, but I'm a realist," he explains now. I felt that if we lost the Ashes series in Australia, I might be dropped as captain. I guess I was getting ready for the consequences. Clarke had, a few weeks earlier, stood down as a selector. He had offered to do so in India, but Cricket Australia accepted his offer on the same night it sacked Mickey Arthur. Clarke's chronic bad back plagued him throughout the England tour, and, aside from his 187 in the third Test at Old Trafford, he was disappointed in his batting. Of the many things that seemed to be going England's way, that Manchester innings was not converted into a match-winner because of rain. From a cricketer who prepares with Olympian thoroughness, Clarke's reaction was almost manic. Unable to sleep, he was alone in the Marriott gym in the pre-dawn hours, telling himself he was preparing in a way that no opposition bowler could match. Some of those close to him grew concerned at his intensity. He didn't play in the tour game in Northampton, and was then undone by Stuart Broad's short-pitched attack in the fifth Test at the Oval. He looked spent, getting into a fractious situation with the umpires and the English players on a spiteful last day. Some asked whether he should take a break. He just ploughed on with more work. Says Clarke, "Everyone's different. Early in my career, I watched Ricky Ponting prepare, thinking you'd do whatever he did, and he often took a break so he could be 'best when fresh'. Well, I figured out that I'm not a 'best when fresh' player. I'm best when I've worked and worked and put even more work into my game. He was man of the series in the one-dayers in England which, in retrospect, were the turning point of the psychological battle between the teams. Only when he got back to Australia did he rest from playing - so that he could put in more work, with his physio, his personal trainer Duncan Kerr, and other support staff. Clarke's signature through this tumultuous year has been his tenacity. Nicknames can reveal and disguise. Mike Hussey got the patent on "Mr Cricket" for his single-mindedness, but Clarke is another Mr Cricket, consumed by the game, obsessive and unstoppable. The superficial contrasts between these two were played up, but they succeeded so prodigiously as a batting partnership because they were professional peas in a pod, hyper-focused, maintaining a similarly fine balance between nerves and self-confidence, and driven by a work ethic so total it seeks not so much analysis as diagnosis. Much was made of how much the Australian team missed Hussey's middle-order stability in India and England, but Clarke's captaincy was entering a new phase as he found himself the only survivor of Australia's previous Ashes win, in 2006-07. Just as Don Bradman's captaincy truly found its voice in the 1940s, when he was the only veteran of the early 1930s, Clarke was strengthened by seniority. After this year's debacle in India, he helped to institute new team-first principles, on and off the field, that addressed what Hussey called the "insular" team culture that he felt had crept in in previous years. By the time Hussey's feelings went public, Clarke had already dealt with them. Clarke and Arthur were part of the selection panel that reinstated the experienced Brad Haddin and Chris Rogers, and brought Steve Smith into the Ashes squad. After Arthur's sacking and the Ashes were lost after just three Test matches, Australia might have gone the way of most other unsuccessful teams, disintegrating on a long tour. Instead, they held together, defying the trend, acting like a winning team even if it wasn't one. Even in those dark days after the Durham loss, Clarke was suppressing his own disappointment by urging on his younger teammates, holding impromptu meetings, projecting a positivity he surely didn't always feel. "When I reflect on two months ago," he says, "it just hits me how quickly things can change. One good performance can change the whole perception. It shows that when you're not enjoying the results, you just have to keep faith in your own ability and the work you do, because things can turn around so quickly. Always the work. Behind the scenes, Clarke's existence seems mostly a dour, spartan round of sessions with the physio, medical staff and trainers. While his team was imploding during the Champions Trophy in May, Clarke was criticised for not being with them. He was in London, the only English location of a specialised machine on which he spent painful, tedious sessions flexing and extending his back. As he saw it, he had the choice of leaving the team or missing the Ashes series. Although he settles on formulae about "having taken criticism all my life" and "being criticised like every other Australian captain," the sniping from some former players has an ongoing sting, even if it tends to be old news. Suffice to say that, in 2004, Clarke walked into an Australian dressing room that had political machinations of which he was innocent. He was thrilled, as any young player would be, to be taken under the wing of the greatest spin bowler of all time, little knowing that the animus that had built up towards Shane Warne would be redirected at Warne's new protege, all the more so after Warne retired. Before Clarke knew it was happening, it happened. A faction of the team resented the role he played in standing down his mate Andrew Symonds after Symonds missed team meetings in Darwin in 2008 to go fishing. As deputy captain, Clarke put duty and team above friendship. Symonds couldn't understand this, and the friendship went. Strangely, a faction of the team held this more against Clarke than against Symonds. Clarke is now silent on this and the other controversies that stem from his early Test career, but the criticism rankles with his supporters. After Ponting's autobiography made critical remarks about Clarke's performance as his vice-captain five years ago, Clarke's friend, business associate and former employer at Kingsgrove Sports indoor cricket centre, Harry Solomons, circulated an email titled Is Michael Clarke the most misunderstood captain Australia has ever had? Solomons addressed each controversy in turn, asking, "The criticism and innuendo is brutal, while some of our media personalities and former 'Test divas' try to score brownie points by their unreal sensationalism of events involving the captain. A bewildered Solomons said Clarke had "remained as humble, as friendly, as considerate, as cordial and approachable as he can be." Whatever the private frustration, Clarke has incorporated his response into a creed of constant self-improvement. As a captain, he is no natural man-manager like Ian Chappell or Richie Benaud, but when Clarke is not instinctive in something, he tries to make up for it with endeavour. During the England tour, as Australia lost each Test, Clarke was asked how he took defeat. "As captain, I take it more personally," he said. Now that his team is winning, he routinely deflects personal questions towards the team. Is this a manufactured disposition? For Clarke, having recognised his shortcomings, the only alternative to making the effort would be not making the effort. "I think it's right that the captain should stand up and take the heat when you lose," he said. Then when you win, you don't take the credit, you spread it around the team. That's the way it should be. None of these other guys had won an Ashes series before. I'm just so happy that they're able to have this experience. While the talk remains rigidly team-first, it has been a vintage series for a captain whose on-field tactical prowess has always drawn praise. The funky field placements have been in just the right spot. The unexpected bowling changes have delivered. The verbal aggression, which brought a fine in Brisbane, has shown a preparedness to trade decorum for in-house solidarity. And still, just as he was up early fretting at 3-0 down in England, Clarke was up early fretting in Perth. On the last day of the Test match, he was awake before dawn, as excited and apprehensive as a child, wondering if this was the day, trying to convert the fear of loss, however unlikely, into a sense of respect for the surprises cricket can deliver. He wasn't the only one. Ryan Harris said he only slept three hours that night. Many in the team slept poorly. The job wasn't done until it was done. Only then did the release come. And then, more work.