Slings and arrows bounce off in Wayne's world and Clarke needs a similar suit of armour Michael Clarke has been urged to develop a thicker skin for the many critisicms he's endured. FOR more than a decade sportsmen have tried to bend it like Beckham but a key for Michael Clarke's success this summer may be to wing it like Wayne. As in Newcastle coach and former Broncos mentor Wayne Bennett. Last week I spent a day in the company of Bennett's son-in-law, former Queensland five-eighth Ben Ikin, and we got talking about the things that have worked for Bennett throughout his illustrious three-decade coaching career. Ben told a story about the day he was at Bennett's house and he read a newspaper column which was witheringly critical of the master coach. "I was starting to get angry and emotional because it took a negative tone about Wayne and midway through reading it I heard giggling over my shoulder," Ikin said. It was Wayne reading the story as well. He said 'I like that bloke ... he can do a job on you.' He kept laughing and just walked off. The column just bounced off Bennett like an arrow hitting a castle wall. Many would have been angry and sworn retribution but Bennett had seen and heard it all before so he marched on without a negative thought, got on with life and probably never thought about it again. Wayne Bennett's ability to not be affected by criticism is something Michael Clarke needs to emulate. That's how many big-time sports personalities survive in the modern world. They don't get distracted by things they can do nothing about. It is a great skill if you can get it. Few do. Many has been the assistant coach who rose to senior ranks and simply found the blowtorch called media criticism roasted them at the spit. There's no way you could expect a 32-year-old Test cricket captain to be as battled hardened and philosophical as a football coach three decades his senior but there are lessons to be learned. Clarke is sensitive by nature so the arrows which bounce of Bennett's crocodile skin often go a lot deeper with the Australian cricket captain. Darren Lehmann urged Clarke to get over his anger at criticism of him in Ricky Ponting's book. Since then there have been reports Clarke has been very upset with other barbs flowing in his direction. We should not be shocked by this for it is nothing more than human nature. True or not, it defies belief that even the stoutest soul could claim to enjoy being cast as a man who failed to embrace team culture. But if Australia is to beat England in this series every spoonful of energy and mental capacity at Clarke's disposal needs to be going into the team cause. It's challenging to do because a man can't change what he is. A sensitive person doesn't suddenly forge a cement heart overnight. But for his own good, Clarke has to be able to find the best way of dealing with the hurricane forces swirling around the team. Different stars coped with public criticism in different ways. Steve Waugh read everything, said little publicly in response, but was motivated to the extreme by anything negative written about him. The easiest way to ensure Waugh would score a century was the suggest he no longer could. Newspaper criticism was like smelling salts to him. A part of him secretly enjoyed it. Greg Chappell had a filter system where if he rated the person criticising him he would take it in - if not he would ignore it. Some, like the admirable Jason Gillespie, never had much of a problem with criticism because, humble man that he is, was often harsher on himself than any journalist was. Mark Taylor, during his term as national captain, seemed to accept that the job would have its turbulence and generally accepted the good, bad and ugly with good humour. No matter how annoyed he was privately, Ricky Ponting rarely whinged about a story. Some coverage angered him like the headlines which branded him a Mug Punter for batting first on a green top in the 2010 SCG Test against Pakistan and he tossed a few gentle barbs back at the press after Australia won the match, later soiled by match-fixing allegations against Pakistan. But these were rare and minor incidents. When he turned up at a media conference, Ponting's mood always seemed to be one of neutrality rather than angry or particularly buoyant. Matthew Hayden often decided to read nothing at all - the good or the bad. Hayden reckoned if he was going bad he did not need to read about it and if he was going well he did not want to get ahead of himself. There would be times when friends would say, "hey, I loved that photo of you on the front of the paper with the kids" and they would be bewildered when he said: "I didn't see it." It meant his scrap book was not as thick as it could have been - but he probably managed a few extra Test centuries.