Sydney, Jan 4: Australia captain Michael Clarke had a perfect day on the cricket field scoring his first ever double-century and taking his team to a position of strength on Day 2 of the Sydney Test. Clarke, who was unbeaten on a career-best score of 251 at stumps, spoke about the current squad, his batting and captaincy at the end of day press conference.
Excerpts:
On his innings today
Hopefully it helps me continue to earn respect, that's all I can do, and most importantly it puts this team in a good position to win another Test match. That's our goal, that's my goal – to help Australia win as many Test matches as I possibly can. One of the things I guess Punter [Ricky Ponting] taught me before I got the captaincy was as a leader you need to make sure you're leading from the front and scoring runs.
To go out there today and score some runs is very special. I think the team's in a wonderful position at the moment, a 280-odd lead. [...] It's fantastic to have a score before my name like I do but as I've seen in the past, if you don't win the Test match, it means nothing.
On the current Australian team
We're a team that's learning. The young guys are getting a bit of experience and working out that winning Test matches is hard work. There's a really good feeling within the team but that's obviously because we're getting a bit of success. Our preparation couldn't be better; we just need to keep building on that consistency, continuing to do our work [...].
On whether this was his best innings so far
Well, it's my best score ever. I don't really know to be honest. I was really proud of the 150 I got against South Africa, they were really tough circumstances and I thought that wicket did a lot more than this wicket did. What makes me proud is that I batted the whole day. That's something I've always tried to do and I haven't done very often so that's very satisfying.
On Australia’s chance to go 2-0 up in the series
We're a long way from being 2-0 up [in the four-Test series], in my opinion. A lot of hard work has to go in the next three days but we're in a really good position at this stage. When you get chances in the game you've got to grab it with both hands and like I said before the start of this series, if India get on top of you, they're a really hard team to stop. So we've got the momentum and we've got to keep it going.
