Humour: Michael Clarke's secret diary revealed

Dear Diary,

Yet another home season comes to an end. It was pleasing to end the season on a high after comprehensively defeating the West Indies in the one-dayers. The West Indies team is a riddle wrapped in a paradox inside an enigma. They perform like world champions on some days, and on others, capitulate as if they suddenly realised a new variation of the ‘Gangnam style’ and have to catch a bus to the hotel to practice the new move.

I wasn’t quite able to comprehend the bizarre scheduling of the whole series against the West Indies. Considering we are supposed to play a crucial series against India, we should have been in India at least a month before the first Test, acclimatizing to the conditions. Maybe BCCI had something to do with it, they always do. Maybe they were scared of us beating them in their own backyard, like Cook and his lads did recently, and so they connived with the WICB (maybe some sort of a favour-for-favour deal? I see the West Indies girls are doing really well in the Women’s World Cup in India) and made us play an irrelevant series against the West Indies. Well played, BCCI!

Tours to India have never been easy for past Australian sides. Steve [Waugh] and Ricky [Ponting] keep telling me so many stories about captaining in India. Steve once told me how excruciating it can be for an Australian captain in India. “These Indians are smart blokes,” he said. “They’ll ask you come out for the toss, make it mandatory for you to wear the team blazer in the 40 degree Chennai heat, and then, they will make you wait, wait and wait more under the scorching heat. And when you get totally frustrated and all the energy is sapped out off your body by standing there like an idiot, the Indian captain walks out for the toss, wearing a smirk on his face. Half of the game is lost there and then itself,” he added.

Many people are saying that we don’t have a strong enough side to defeat India this time around. I don’t think so. For starters, we have a pretty decent bowling attack. Pete [Siddle] thinks that fast bowlers will have a big role to play in India. I agree. Not many know that the ‘big role’ he mentioned was that of getting rid of the early shine of the ball, so that regular spinners like Nathan [Lyon], Xavier [Doherty] and the man with best bowling figures in an innings in India out of the current lot, and arguably the greatest left-arm off-break bowler for Australia of all time – myself (alright, I am turning into bit of a narcissist nowadays) – are able to exploit the dryness of Indian pitches.

Nathan and Xavier have never played in India before, and this concerns me a bit. Maybe I should call-up Monty Panesar and ask him to give our guys some insights on bowling in the sub-continent, or maybe, he could even become our bowling coach! Mind you, Monty did have considerable success against the Indians recently.

I even discussed this with Shane [Watson] but he said we could do with a better idea. He said that we should make our young spinners watch Youtube videos of Ravindra Jadeja‘s batting. That will help them understand that playing in India, after all, is easy and that India is a generous and benevolent nation.

Our batting looks good too but that’s not my concern. India have in their ranks a couple of spinners who bowl in Tests as if they are bowling in a T20 game. They try to curtail the flow of runs rather than looking to take wickets, and then, end up doing none. They have also brought back to their side the one player who-shall-not-be-named by any Australian, the eternal nemesis of Australia, the sardar – the Turbanator. But nowadays, even he is busy recording Punjabi songs rather than working on his bowling skills, and so run scoring should be easy for our batsmen.

I see that India has unearthed another spinning sensation by the name of Bhuvneshwar Kumar. The chap has a pretty long run-up (which is kind of strange for the pace he bowls at) and can prodigiously spin the ball in both directions, much more than their other spinners – Ashwin and Ojha. Maybe I’ll ask my Pune Warriors mentor Dada about this lad. Maybe he can throw some more light on his skills.

I really hope we can pull-off a series win this time around. I know India will come hard at us, but I also know we have the team to overcome any given challenge. Cricket’s a lot like Shane Warne‘s mood swings, you really can’t make out what’s going to happen next.

Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction and should not be taken seriously. All opinions expressed here are those of the author and may not necessarily reflect those of the site.