Canine Fanciers,
It's always very sad to hear of the end of a love affair. Still, the terribly upsetting recent news is not all bad for a bloke who'd willingly roll over and let MJ Clarke give him a root. Felt that way ever since falling in love with Pup on seeing him for the first time in the flesh as a raw rookie playing for NSW v WA in the Sheffield Shield at the Newcastle No.1 Sports Ground. That day he put on a century partnership with ME Waugh in a batting exhibition, and at one stage looked so comfortable against the bowling, he tonked a mighty square-drive that soared high wide and handsome...one bounce off the asphalt and over the ground's perimeter fence, whereupon the pill bounced a time or two, and then gently rolled across half a dozen netball courts, before plopping into Mullet Creek. Saw it off the bat and all the way into the water. Despite the best efforts of gangs of yoofs looking for it, lost ball was the call. And that, my friends, was on the 23rd of January 2003. Now if that's not true love, then tell me something different. Been the man's biggest fan for 18 years, and in all likelihood, he doesn't even know it.
So it's a crying shame that Michael found himself in the most unfortunate position of having to move out of he and the wife's love nest, a "$14M Vaucluse mansion", to "another of the couple's properties in Bondi". Of course, Pup's always been unlucky in love. But if you believe the papers - and why shouldn't you - "Kylsy threw him out the back door without so much as a sausage". So, let's make this perfectly clear, MJ Clarke is no cad or bounder, oh no siree, a man of principle he is, who went away when he was told to leave in no uncertain terms, it seems, never to go back.
Most unfortunately, it will certainly further tarnish Pup's already tawdry reputation with the General Public of Australia - who have never liked him, never will and there's a fair bit of enduring hate out there too. As it is, he's hardly in town anyway and spends as much time as he can being a property baron in India with a net worth at a very conservatively estimated $US40M. (Never mind that the divorce will be a tasty lawyer's picnic). It's in India where he is lauded with much adulation and where his champion cricketing career is quite rightly, without question, widely revered. As it is in England, where he is one of the very few Life Members of the Marylebone Cricket Club, so he is always most welcome to a gin'n'tonic on the chit in the Long Room at Lord's any time he likes. Yet, in Australia, he is treated like offal. Please tell me why? It's the most enduring eternal mysteries of my fandom of the man that he is so detested by the Great Unwashed. Why, oh, why? The greatest batsman of his generation - intensely disliked by the Plebeian Masses, and Simon Katich. It doesn't make sense and it's just farking outrageous, for mine, considering his admission to the cricketing Pantheon. There's ample room for me to go on and on about it here endlessly and Blame the Bingle, that sport of thing - but being in a charitable mood, that you will be spared. You'd have to think he's happy enough now flogging Wagner snake oil, pushing other sponsor's barrows(Buy More Hublot Waches!), doing the Indian celebrity appearance circuit, and making poignant comments from time-to-time on Star TV's coverage of the IPL, which keeps him on the sub-continent for months at a time. Over there, he'd never ever be short of a root, and quite obviously, he's not short of a bob. So what's not to like?
At least, at 38, Pup's old enough now to know better, now he's learnt to put ambition away after finally realising he's done it all. For years after his premature retirement he had enormous difficulties just getting used to the concept of resting on his considerable wreath of laurels. Now he knows there's nothing left to prove. He's No.1, so why try harder? And he's clever enough to make sure he has a very lush pasture indeed to be put out to. Only one thing is for certain, he'll need some very powerful pharmaceuticals for his chronic case of Shagger's Back.
And just to confound and spite me, with a new gig in commercial breakfast radio, soon enough Michael Clarke will be proclaimed Bachelor of the Year and he'll start doing nude centrefolds in Cleo magazine, with a fetching batting glove tastefully concealing his manhood.
All power to his oars.
