It might be best for everyone right now if Australia were to re-emerge, sooner rather than later, as a genuinely potent force

Eight years on from his Test debut, stiffened now by the becoming responsibilities of captaincy, it isn't hard to see why Australia once swooned so tenderly over Michael Clarke. Australia's Test and one-day skipper remains an appealing figure: enduringly youthful, milkily handsome in the manner of a cinematically doomed first world war infantryman, and at times almost a caricature of a certain kind of Australianism.

For all its bluff and sandpapery qualities Australia can also be a terribly sentimental place, not least when contemplating an image of itself that seems to entwine with the finer cricketing qualities: a green-tinged notion of Australian grace and Australian youthfulness, present in reverence for its cricketing cathedrals, the seasonal rhythms of its Test schedule, and of course the recent and terribly sombre cult of the baggy green cap. Only the most tearfully self-mythologising of cricketing nations could, in all seriousness, enshrine a shred of Steve Waugh's red snot-rag in its cricket museum within, not 100, or 150 years, but two years of his retirement. Let us congregate now over these minor soilings, this recently crystallised mucus, as though He were still with us now bestriding our fair land. Oh. Sorry, Steve. Didn't see you standing there.

This has already been a big week for Clarke. Scrubbed for the cameras, it fell to Australia's seductively peppy – and increasingly convincing – Test captain to announce the formal opening of the Australian cricket season on Monday. And beyond that the start of what is expected to be a vitally important 15 months for Australian cricket, English cricket, Test match cricket and, indeed, cricket.

Cricket's Back is the slogan Cricket Australia has chosen to go with. This is, of course, inaccurate. Cricket isn't back. Cricket never went away. It doesn't these days. As if by way of example, one line to emerge ahead of time from Australia cricket's spring coming-out ball was the recall of the reportedly drained Shane Watson from the Champions League in South Africa. By the time he gets home and straight into preparations for the forthcoming summer series, Watson (Shane! Cricket's back! Shane! Cheer up!) will have played 15 Twenty20 matches across three different continents since 5 September, prior to which he spent June and July in England and Ireland.

Albeit, for all the committee-led marketing blather of such occasions, it does feel like a significant moment, not least for Clarke himself. What an unexpectedly interesting cricketer he is, albeit a cricketer made interesting, or made to stand out, by the altered scenery around him. When Clarke first emerged – splendidly talented, splendidly orthodox – he seemed a head prefect of a prodigy, a little flash, a little hair-gelled, but still a cricketer in the traditional mould. There seemed no reason to assume that Australian cricket wouldn't always produce, at its best, players like this: players whose first instinct is the cover drive, who can learn the cross-bat neologisms of the newer, shorter forms – as Clarke has: his ODI record is excellent – but whose instinct is always towards old school principles.

This is no longer quite so obvious. David Warner, for example, has headed in exactly the opposite direction, grafting Test match rhythms on to his natural explosiveness. And instead it is perhaps Clarke who stands out, a purist who only made his IPL debut last year, who seems at times rather pointedly correct, with an elegance that references constantly those older stylings.

"It's a really exciting 12-15 months, as big a time that I will have in my career," Clarke said in Sydney and this is true for many reasons. Most obviously because he is both captain and, for the first time selector of an Australian team once again on the rise, and which will in that span face close to a full house of the greatest Test challenges currently available to it.

First there is the irresistible prospect of a three-Test series against South Africa, starting in Brisbane in three weeks' time and promising – Test cricket is boring and slow remember – a feast of aggressive fast bowling on pacy pitches at the Gabba and the Waca. Morne Morkel, Dale Steyn and Vern "McGrath" Philander will hope to outbowl Pat Cummins, James Pattinson and Peter Siddle as they did England's pace attack. Five of these six can touch 90mph. Cummins, the most exciting young Australian, has only played a single Test, but appears to have both brawn and brain. Someone, somewhere, perhaps even Clarke, might bowl a bit of spin at some point.

The Aussies will then play Sri Lanka and West indies at home and India in India early next year. After which it's the Ashes! And not just the Ashes but the Ashes super-sized, a gut-busting all-you-can-eat Ashes buffet of 10 Tests in six months starting next July at Trent Bridge, where locals could be seen already queuing to buy tickets earlier this week, a mere nine months ahead of time.

And so perhaps at this point it might be healthy to acknowledge that, a bit like pensioners in the former East Germany in thrall to Ostalgie, that unexpected yearning for the old certainties of a previous era, it might be best for everyone right now if Australia were to re-emerge, sooner rather than later, as a genuinely potent force. Never mind Clarke's 15 months, this is a vital interlude for the traditional rhythms of white-clothinged cricket and the basic question of how it wants to present itself to the world, not to mention beyond this what kind of heft it still expects to carry. So much has changed of late that perhaps it is also time to acknowledge that England and Australia need each other, that a strong Australia, if indeed we have one, might be good for everyone right now, just as Clarke arriving on the Spin's own shores next summer a Test and 50-over captain in the prime of his cricketing life is a mouth-watering prospect.

How good is this team anyway? Under Clarke Australia have won eight of their last 10 Tests, but they still remain riddled with imponderables. The fast bowling runs deep with Ryan Harris, Ben Hilfenhaus and the excellent Mitchell Starc all as much in the mix as the trio mentioned above. On the fringes, the Spin's Australian sources also mention Ben Cutting and Jackson Bird, who sound like made-up names but are apparently actual quick bowlers of promising pedigree.

The batting may or may not work out, but if it doesn't there's always Phil Hughes and Usman Khawaja lying about the place like yesterday's socks ready to be uncrinkled, dusted down and cautiously eased back into action. Nobody seems to know who the wicketkeeper is. Brad Haddin has been absent on compassionate leave. Matthew Wade looks all right. Tim Paine, meh. As for spin-bowling, well, the word is uncapped, untried Queensland leg-spinner Cameron Boyce might just be the next big … oh well. Let's not go down that road.

Either way, sink or swim, these are crucial times, with Clarke perched daintily in the vanguard, sword unsheathed, left elbow high, a standard bearer for a period in the sport's history that, like every other period recently, has a feeling of historic decisiveness. We are now decisively away. And cricket, which never went away, is definitely back.

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