Howard wary of daunting away task

At the dawn of his decade-plus international career, Michael Clarke could have been excused for presuming that Test matches were simply won by the best credentialed team regardless of the field on which those battles were waged.

On his first overseas assignment, as the young work experience batsman filling the spot of an injured Damien Martyn in the Caribbean in 2003, Clarke watched Stephen Waugh’s team consign the once mighty West Indies to their heaviest home series defeat (3-1) in almost 50 years.

Clarke then made his memorable Test debut at the start of the following year’s tour of India which delivered Australia’s first series triumph there since the ‘60s, a victory that was heralded as traversing cricket’s ‘final frontier’.

When his next offshore venture realised a flawless trip to New Zealand in which Australia remained unbeaten across nine matches in all three formats and then a thumping victory in the first of five Ashes Tests that followed in England, Clarke’s overseas Test record read five wins and a solitary loss from eight starts.

It was to prove a statistical aberration, the result of finding himself as part of one of the strongest, most versatile Test line-ups that cricket has hosted.

But in the decade since that Lord’s victory that preceded Australia’s 2005 Ashes defeat, Clarke has celebrated success just 15 times from the 47 occasions that he’s taken to foreign fields in his Baggy Green Cap.

In 20 of those Tests he’s been on the losing side.

Australia has not won a Test in India since Clarke’s double of 91 and 73 in just his third outing lifted them to a 342-run win over the home team at Nagpur in October 2004.

And despite starting so promisingly in that 2005 campaign by coming within nine runs of a century in his maiden Test at Lord’s, Clarke has never been part of an Ashes series-winning team in the UK. Image Id: ~/media/1BEF0594B04C42A496997A7F14C4C6FD

Clarke, Darren Lehmann, Justin Langer and Adam Gilchrist after their series win in 2004 // Getty Images 

That’s why the Australia brainstrust is distrusting and dismissive of any suggestions that the five-nil Ashes whitewash inflicted by Clarke’s men on a dysfunctional and then dispirited England barely a year ago will be revisited when the battle for the urn resumes at Cardiff in July.

“We completely understand that it is going to be an extremely difficult tour, which we do expect to win,” Cricket Australia’s Executive General Manager of Team Performance Pat Howard told cricket.com.au yesterday.

“We go into every series expecting that we are going to win but anybody talking about cakewalks or that sort of one-sided affair is pretty naïve to touring these days.

“We know how hard it is going to be.

“If we play our best we will win but if we do anything that is even slightly sub-par it will be an extremely tight, competitive series.

“I think people tend to forget that it is not in Australia.”

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Not that struggling in unfamiliar Test arenas is a contemporary problem for Australia alone.

Since Clarke’s 2004 debut series in India that his team won 2-1, only South Africa (20 wins from 46 Tests on the road) boast a better wining-away record than Australia who have won 22 of their 56.

In that time, the Proteas have won a series in every Test-playing nation except for India (where they have not triumphed since 2000).

England’s 2-1 win on the sub-continent in 2012 – built on the batting exploits of skipper Alastair Cook and deposed star Kevin Pietersen – is the only series loss inflicted on India in their own backyard in the past decade.

But even the game’s financial and political powerhouse has struggled to take that form beyond India, having never won a Test series in Australia in almost 70 years, never in South Africa since they were reintegrated in 1992 and once in England over the past two decades (their 1-0 success in 2007).

In his recent column for ‘The Times’ in the UK, former England captain Mike Atherton cited the absence of once-traditional warm-up games for touring teams ahead of and during away Test series as a key reason why they regularly struggle to come to grips with foreign conditions.

“That is a common theme, and a hurdle to overcome for any modern international player,” Atherton wrote.

“When New Zealand play England in the two-Test series in May, many of their players will have come straight from the Indian Premier League. 

“They will be asked to adapt to a different form of the game, in different conditions without having hit a ball in a match.

“As adaptable as players are, that must give the home team an advantage.” Image Id: ~/media/EF0872BE019C453498A890C5D4C37D64

Clarke padding up on his first Test tour in the Caribbean in 2003 // Getty Images

But as Clarke discovered when he was a last-minute addition to the Caribbean touring party in 2003, the Australians were compelled to switch from the ODI mode that had carried to them to the World Cup in South Africa to the opening Test in Guyana in such short time there was no chance for a proper warm-up fixture.

And Waugh’s team comfortably won the first three Tests of that series before running out of puff in the last.

In Howards’s view, the answer as to why – in the era of almost unrestricted player movement around the world and cricketers able to experience the challenges and idiosyncrasies of varying conditions worldwide from virtually school age – is not quite so black and white.

“Teams inherently win at home - they know their conditions well, they know how to play there and it’s a massive head start for every series,” he said today.

“But there is no one factor, there are lots of issues and variables to deal with in different countries.

“It’s essentially that they (the home team’s players) have grown up in those conditions, they know how to deal with them so it is the great enduring challenge and as Michael Clarke is often quoted as saying ‘the great skill of Test cricket is winning away from home’.”

With Test matches scheduled in the Caribbean, the UK and Bangladesh between the start of June and the beginning of the next home summer, Australia at least has the comparative luxury of focusing largely on the red-ball form of the game.

The flat, slow pitches anticipated in the West Indies will doubtless yield an increased role for specialist spinners Nathan Lyon and the uncapped Fawad Ahmed, while the seam attack will be honed for English conditions where more bounce and lateral movement is expected.

Though if the experience of the 2013 Ashes tour provides a guide, the pitches in England – which has already enjoyed a sunny start to summer – might resemble those that will be encountered in Bangladesh come October, where Australia has not played since 2006.

Regardless of the prevailing conditions, the message from Howard to players and fans alike is clarion clear - don’t expect another whitewash and don’t despair when the inevitable setbacks arise.

“We are going to have to be calm,” Howard said.

“We’re going to have days and sessions and times in these series when we’re going to be doing it tough.

“We’ve seen that you can resurrect yourself, and I think the recent ICC World Cup (after an early loss to New Zealand) showed that as long as you don’t panic when you get behind then you should be able to find your way back.

“I think our ability to react to any pressure that comes on during these series is going to be important and we’ve got a good side with a lot of maturity to be able to deal with that.

“The guys are cognisant that it’s going to be hard, and we understand that while the public might think it’s going to be an easy Ashes series I don’t think there’s anybody within the Australia cricket team that holds that view.

“Of course you’ve got to believe in yourselves.

“You have to believe in your talent and I don’t think anyone would suggest the Australia cricket team doesn’t have the talent, but it’s a completely different challenge playing away to playing at home.”