Former Australian captain Michael Clarke’s most controversial moment in his captaincy career was certainly the 2013 suspension of his four teammates in India, which is labeled as “Homework-Gate” by the Australian media.
After more than two years of that incident, Clarke says he erred by not publicly telling the full story behind the saga. Australian players Shane Watson, Usman Khawaja, James Pattinson and Mitchell Johnson had been banned for one Test match after failing to complete a written task set by coach Mickey Arthur back then.
Biggest lie to media
Recently in an interview, the 34-year-old was asked what the biggest lie he ever told the media is. Clarke said, “Let’s call them white lies. Who knows? Who knows?”
“I think you always try and be as honest as you can but you protect your teammates, there’s no doubt about it. It’s not lying, it’s just protecting your team.
“Sometimes there’s situations where you have to be completely honest and I guess you know the situation in India when four players got dropped, I think that’s an occasion where we probably tried to only give 60 per cent of the information.
“That was the time where [the] public needed to know everything, needed to know the full truth to be able to comprehend it.”
I should have been more upfront with the public over “homework-gate”
When asked if he would have tackled the situation differently given another opportunity, the right-handed batsman said that he should have been more upfront with the public over “homework-gate”. He said, “I just would have been more open and honest from the start to finish, I would have told the public, I think they had the right to know.
“It was more than just Mickey Arthur asking for guys to do their homework and four guys not doing their homework; that was the icing on the cake.”
Clarke also believes Cricket Australia (CA) should have been as upfront with the press as the Queensland Rugby League was earlier this month when it handed 12-month suspensions to six players.
He said, “That’s one day’s press or two days’ press, yet what happened in India was days, weeks, months of media and we copped so much criticism for that but I think we should partly blame ourselves for not being completely open and honest.”
The former Australian captain admitted that the decision to drop four players hurt his relationship with some of the players. He said, “I stood beside Mickey and 100 per cent supported his decision, so I think people certainly saw me accountable for that and I never hid behind that,
“I was never scared of that tough conversation with a teammate or with the team so I guess some people might have found that harder to accept or deal with but I hope after, as time went on, I hope they respected and understood the reasons that I made decisions through my career.”
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