In Michael Clarke’s “moving forward” matrix, there’s no room for regrets. He tells Bryce Corbett how he wants family and fatherhood to shape his future.
Before each match of cricket he plays, Michael Clarke performs a ritual. He enters the dressing room, unzips his cricket bag, which he has fastidiously packed in the neatest way possible the night before, and methodically unpacks all his gear, carefully placing each item – every glove, every bat, every water bottle and accessory – in a pre-assigned place.
No matter where he’s playing, no matter how foreign the dressing room, the ritual is always the same.
Predictably enough, his teammates make fun of him, but for the current vice-captain of the Australian cricket team, it’s just a further extension of the discipline and order that has given shape to his entire life. For there is nothing Michael John Clarke, 29, formerly of Liverpool, NSW and lately of Bondi Beach, likes better than order. Order, discipline and control.
“You should see my cricket bag compared to every one else on the Australian cricket team,” he tells The Weekly, excitedly. “They all think I’m anal, it’s that neat and tidy. Everything is packed perfectly. I’ve been told I’m a bit obsessive-compulsive, but I don’t think I am. I’m just very organised in everything I do. That’s just my life now. I live according to a six-month matrix that goes day-to-day and tells me what I have on. And I love that. I love being organised.“
On paper, the pairing of Michael Clarke and Lara Bingle made perfect sense. Take Australian cricket’s current pin-up boy and match him with a swimwear model renowned for her sunny beach-girl persona and – hey presto! – instant celebrity It couple.
Engaged at 27 and 20 respectively, Michael and Lara swanned happily about town for a while, attending black-tie cricket events, signing endorsement deals and generally offering themselves up as photogenic fodder for the social pages. Perhaps incongruously for a couple who would later ask a curious media to respect their privacy when it all came asunder, they threw a lavish, all-star engagement party at Sydney’s Luna Park.
They were two kids upon whom life had smiled, one for his facility with the cricket bat, the other for her natural good looks – and they were in love.
“So tell me … Lara. What happened?” Even down the line from Bangalore, you can almost hear the heavy sigh. “Oh look, that’s in my past,” he says. “It’s over eight months ago that Lara and I split up. I’d prefer to continue to look to the future.”
“But it was such a high profile relationship and it’s never really been explained,” I persist.
Again the sigh. “Look,” he begins. “I guess anytime a relationship doesn’t go the way it’s supposed to go and you split up, then there’s hard times. It was certainly a tough time, I’m sure, for both of us. I’ll never understand why there is so much interest in my personal life. For me, it was eight months ago, I’m looking forward.”
Case closed, life experience compiled, compartmentalised and duly filed away. Moving on.
Read more of this story in the November issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly. Watch what happened behind the scenes in Michael Clarke’s photoshoot with us above.
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