Great Article by Paul Kent in last Sat's Tele:

TEST captains should be like the sheriff in a good cowboy movie. Say nothing, shoot straight. And that's our problem with Michael Clarke.

Clarke is not Australia's most overrated cricketer, as he was voted this week. Not by a long shot. Clarke was the standout batsman on the Ashes tour. Without him it would have been worse. He will slaughter the West Indies and Pakistan this summer and go on to far greater glories.
Overrated is not the problem.

His problem is a little more delicate. Michael Clarke is a tosser. Or, to give him an out clause, he appears to be a tosser.

He might actually be an OK bloke, but how are we to ever know when all we see is the facade? On the evidence available it is hard to like Clarke. He has gone away from what we thought we knew - and liked - about him.

Almost from the moment he came into the Australian team he was Boy Most Likely. The Next Captain. We were all happy to run with it.

The boy from the western suburbs of Sydney who ticked all the boxes we want ticked in our Test captains. And that lasted about, oh, five minutes. Before long Clarke was too cool for school. He got the cool tattoos. Hooked up with Lara. Bought the flash car.

He started talking about himself in the third person, so we knew all too well that Michael Clarke was going to do what was best for Michael Clarke, just as we were getting over Michael Clarke. What makes it worse is that Clarke has already lost most of the support of the cricketing media, so he now struggles to get the fair go he got early.

It's mostly because the media is far too aware his butter-won't-melt-in-my-mouth persona when the television cameras are on him, Mr Happy Go Lucky, quickly turns into Godzilla whenever the slobs from the press drift in for a quote, away from the revealing truth of the television lens. They don't believe he should have it both ways.

He is hard to like because somebody tried to turn Pup and Lara into Posh and Becks. Good grief.
It is not Tall Poppy Syndrome, as the confused are trying to portray.

Clarke has lost his way, and nobody around him seems strong enough to tell him to pull his head in. Somebody needs to tell Clarke he is moving further away from everything that once endeared himself to the public. We like our Test captains with a certain kind of mettle.
We like Steve Waugh leaning on his bat and staring down Curtly Ambrose with just enough choice words to make Curtly turn and threaten.
And Waugh hold his nerve.

We like Ricky Ponting spitting blood and then turning and taking mark, resuming strike. Allan Border was Captain Cranky, but there was no other batsman we preferred to send in if the match was on the line. For them all, it was about the cricket.

The public is no longer sure with Clarke. Fans are frustrated by his continual A-list appearances and the love story constantly jammed on us. The campaigning for the top job. Clarke is not overrated, but there is no question he is Australia's most over-exposed cricketer.
Gee, it makes it hard to cheer him on.

He turned up at the Melbourne Cup and announced he was being sponsored by Prada. What fashion piece do we know Steve Waugh for? A baggy green cap and a scrap of red towel kept in his pocket. Everything else is bought straight off the rack.

Waugh was no-frills, staunch.

Who can ever remember Waugh openly campaigning for the Australian captaincy while Mark Taylor was still captain? And on Taylor, who remembers anything about his captaincy other than he might be, quite probably, our greatest ever.

No doubt Waugh coveted Taylor's job, the same as Ponting did when Waugh was captain. The same as Taylor did when Border was captain, and all the way back. Not one of them publicly campaigned like Clarke, who denies it.

We like our sports heroes to be greater versions of ourselves. Like Shane Warne, who gives the impression he would happily sit down to talk to chicks over a beer an hour after taking five-for. Clarke's public image is moving further and further away from that kind of man.

It is unbelievable how simple it is to fix Clarke's reputation, yet Clarke and everybody around him seem incapable of recognising it.

So cop the tip: Shut up.

When you have to speak, talk cricket. Keep playing tough. When you have to be seen, be playing cricket. Tone down the love story. Buy yourself a ute. Put a cattle dog on the back of it. Cut out the labels in all your clothes. Throw away the GQ magazine.

Most of all, be yourself and not what somebody else is trying to make you.