Over a decade and a half since Michael Clarke’s infamous dressing room bust-up with Simon Katich, the ramifications of the incident continue to echo through Aussie cricket circles as the former Test skipper is ostracised by his teammates.
From a cricket standpoint, it would be fair to argue that not only did Clarke live up to expectations bestowed on him as a generational talent, he perhaps exceeded them.
But while the four-time Allan Border Medal winner will statistically go down as one of the greats of the modern era, he hasn’t earned the near-universal love reserved for some of his contemporaries.
On a recent podcast, sports journalists Phil Rothfield and Andrew Webster revealed that Clarke’s ex-teammates have little to do with him, with none in attendance at his 40th birthday celebrations – and some of it stems from his confrontation with Katich.
The last Test of the 2009 series against South Africa at the SCG should be remembered as Matthew Hayden’s final appearance for Australia. Or for Graeme Smith batting with a broken hand as the Proteas became the first team to win a Test series in Australia for 15 years.
But both were overshadowed by an ugly confrontation between Katich and Clarke in the dressing room.
Many Aussie cricketers keep their distance from former Australian skipper Michael Clarke (pictured with girlfriend Arabella Sherbourne)
Clarke (right) and Simon Katich were involved in an ugly confrontation at the SCG in 2009
Clarke lashed out in frustration at the delays over the performing of Under the Southern Cross I Stand because he had other plans away from the team – and Katich grabbed him by the throat as the confrontation escalated.
It highlighted just how different Clarke was from the likes of Katich, who was an old-school, blue-collar cricketer.
A month later, it emerged Clarke was anxious to leave the SCG as he had a booking at a bar to celebrate the end of the Test summer.
The details of the confrontation were only laid bare in 2016, when Clarke told his version of events in his autobiography.
In it he claimed Katich and Michael Hussey, who was then in charge of the team song, orchestrated the delay to deliberately annoy him and spoil his plans.
‘Huss [Hussey] and ‘Kato’ [Katich] seem to be enjoying the delay more and more, particularly at my expense,’ Clarke wrote.
‘I think I hear them say something like: ‘F***it, let’s make him wait a bit longer’. And then I lose it.
‘Hang on, you’re doing this out of spite, you f***ing dogs. Have the balls to say it to my face. Kato fires up: ‘What did you say?’
Clarke claimed Katich grabbed him as the situation became heated and felt his teammate was on the verge of physically attacking him
Clarke (pictured with ex-fiancee Lara Bingle) hasn’t earned the near-universal love reserved for some of his contemporaries
Mitchell Johnson (right) claimed under Clarke’s captaincy the atmosphere in the Australian team turned ‘very toxic’ with several players not wanting to take to the field
‘I said have the balls to say it to my face, you weak c**s.’
Shortly after Clarke took over the captaincy in 2011, Katich was surprisingly cut from the list of Cricket Australia’s centrally contracted players.
The opening batter had been a rock for Australia, averaging 50.48 in 33 Tests at the top of the order, and he pinned his demotion to the 2009 fracas at the SCG.
‘You don’t have to be Einstein to figure out that it’s not just the selectors that had a part in sending me on my way,’ he said in a thinly veiled dig at Clarke in 2011.
Webster and Rothfield explained that Katich isn’t the only ex-teammate who has distanced himself from ‘Pup’ – revealing that no ex-teammate came to his 40th birthday party.
‘It became apparent from there (the Katich incident) how distant Michael Clarke was from the rest of that cricket side,’ Webster said on the Off The Record podcast.
‘I’ve heard that on his 40th birthday, there were no cricketers at it. Which is fine but it just showed Clarkey is a different cat.
‘You also see all those great old champions at the Test cricket who are either in the Fox box, or the ABC, but I have never seen him at the Sydney Test, and he doesn’t seem to be part of any reunions.’
Clarke said one of his biggest regrets was falling out with teammate Andrew Symonds (pictured together), who he sent home from a match in Darwin in 2008 because he went fishing instead of attending a team meeting
The pair were great mates for several years – but the friendship didn’t last
Clarke had looked like Australia’s captain-elect since making his Test debut and he eventually took on the mantle in 2011 when Ricky Ponting stepped down.
Clarke won 24 of his 47 Tests as skipper and his captaincy was a roller-coaster. If the high point was a whitewash over England in the 2013-14 Ashes, there were plenty to low points to choose from.
Australia lost the Ashes in England in 2013 and 2015, with Clarke criticising the attitude of some players on the former tour as a ‘tumour’.
A 4-0 thrashing in India in 2013 came as Clarke and then-coach Mickey Arthur suspended four players, including Mitchell Johnson, in what became known as the ‘homework saga’.
Clarke also famously fell out with the late Andrew Symonds – and never got to mend the friendship.
The first significant cracks in their friendship appeared in the 2007-08 India-Australia Test series held in Australia when the infamous ‘Monkeygate’ scandal broke.
Symonds alleged that Indian off-spinner Harbhajan Singh had referred to him as a ‘monkey’ in a heated altercation. India argued that the controversial spinner had said, ‘Teri ma ki’ [your mother’s], which is a slur in Hindi.
Clarke famously won that Test in Sydney in the final over of the day, but Symonds said his mate had failed to have his back when the matter was hauled before match referee Mike Procter.
‘The stump microphone evidence disappeared. It was just one thing after another. That weighed heavily on me. I started drinking heavily. I had the Australian Captain Ricky Ponting backing me. Adam Gilchrist, Matthew Hayden backed me. They were good friends and still are,’ Symonds said on The Brett Lee Podcast.
The four-time Allan Border Medal winner will go down as one of the greats of the modern era
The star all-rounder opened up on his rift with Michael Clarke to reveal jealousy and money drove the pair apart when he spoke on the Brett Lee podcast just last month.
He believed Clarke became envious when he signed a huge $1.8million contract with the Deccan Chargers in the Indian Premier League in 2008.
‘Matthew Hayden said to me — when the IPL started, I got a pretty penny to go and play in the IPL — he identified it as there was a bit of jealousy that potentially came into the relationship there,’ he told the podcast.
‘Money does funny things. It’s a good thing but it can be a poison and I reckon it may have poisoned our relationship.’
Their mateship came to an end in 2008, when Symonds was sent home from a Test match in Darwin when he chose fishing over a compulsory team meeting. He felt Clarke – who was Test captain by then – had betrayed him.
