Former Australia captain Michael Clarke on Monday has denied that he was the reason behind former teammate Simon Katich not receiving the Cricket Australia contract back in 2011 when he was made the captain of the team. Clarke and Katich had a massive dressing room spat in 2010 that rocked that team, and many speculated that the latter’s exclusion was due to the incident.
In a recent edition of Big Sports Breakfast radio interview, Clarke told a fan that he had nothing to do with Katich snub.
“You recently made comments about Usman Khawaja and his sacking, saying that you were hoping it wasn’t made personal by selectors — isn’t that exactly what you did with Simon Katich affair?,” the caller asked.
In response, Clarke said: “Incorrect. Let me tell you the truth because you’re going off what you’ve heard or what you’ve been reading in the paper,” he said. “Simon and I did have an incident in the change room. But from my perspective, because I can’t talk for Simon, it was done and dealt with. We had a conversation the next day, it was dealt with. “What people don’t understand is ... because I became captain of Australia, I have no say in who gets a contract. Simon Katich was not dropped from a team when I was captain of Australia or when I was a selector.”
He further added: “The three they had to choose from was Ricky Ponting, Michael Hussey and Simon Katich,” Clarke said on the radio show on Monday.
“They were going to give contracts to two of those three players and they went with Ricky Ponting and Michael Hussey ahead of Simon Katich. So his contract selection had absolutely nothing to do with me.” He further said that he tried to bring Katich back into the side. “You are entitled to feel whatever you feel but I can tell you now, on that Ashes tour I fought to have him back into that squad because, I agree, we needed a top order batsman, and his numbers were outstanding over a long period of time,” he said.
“I understand a lot of people’s question and frustrations around it because it was in and around the time, I had become captain of the team, new contracts had to be done, there was Chinese whispers about what exactly happened in the change room.
“I can understand why the public thought, ‘okay now all of a sudden Michael’s become captain he doesn’t like Simon so he doesn’t want him in the team.’”
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