KEY POINTS:
A squash ball stuck up the batting glove worked a treat for Adam Gilchrist in the World Cup final - but you won't find his Australian teammate Michael Clarke trying it any time soon.
Clarke has practised catching drills with a squash ball to help the hand-eye co-ordination. After catching the small black rubber ball for a while, a cricket ball "does look like a football", he admitted.
But Gilchrist's stunning 149 against Sri Lanka with a squash ball up his left glove might not be a trendsetter in the Australian dressing room. "He's done it at practice for a fair length of time and it seems to work for him," Clarke said.
Wouldn't it feel weird? "Certainly would for me."
But if there's one trend among the Australian batsmen Clarke fancies emulating, it's his captain Ricky Ponting's remarkable record. There are parallels in their early international years.
Clarke, in Auckland for a Slazenger promotion at Cricket Express in Mt Eden yesterday, has played 27 tests, scoring 1512 runs at an average of 42.0, with four hundreds. At the same point of his career, Ponting had made 1630 runs at 41.79, also with four tons.
After hitting his second Ashes hundred in their recent 5-0 drubbing of England, Clarke opined to Ponting that he felt his batting had improved since being dropped for a time in 2005.
Ponting pulled him up smartly. "He stopped me there and said, 'Mate, you were as good a player 2-3 years ago as you are now'," Clarke recalled.
Ponting's message was that Clarke was learning how to score runs in his own way, rather than trying to emulate other run-makers.
Batting wisdom was coming with maturity, just as it had done for Ponting, who now averages 59 with 33 hundreds and is the world's best batsman.
Having regained a spot in the test and ODI teams, Clarke is determined to stay there, and that means continually seeking improvement.
Sitting still doesn't work in the competitive Australian setup. In another Ponting link, Clarke, 26, is tipped as a top contender to succeed the tough Tasmanian. But the silver-haired New South Welshman clips that idea to the square-leg fence.
"In my mind, I need to concentrate 100 per cent on the job in hand," he said. "I'd be lying if I said it's not something I dream of.
"Any young kid would want to captain their country - but there are a lot of ifs and buts."
Clarke said Ponting, now 32, could still be captain in five years' time - and the next captain might not have made his debut yet. "Really, it's the last thing on my mind right now."
