Australia captain Michael Clarke, already one of the nation's top-earning sportsmen, has enhanced his income with a new sponsorship deal with a US-based baseball kit company.

The deal will see Clarke launch a line of modified baseball mitts, designed with the Australia captain's input specifically for cricket fielding drills, later this year.

Clarke started the Australian cricketers' trend of wearing fielding gloves during drills and warm-ups on the advice of Mike Young, the team's American fielding consultant coach. That, and Young's use of a baseball mitt to assist in fielding drills, has prompted Rawlings to sign up the Aussie skipper to develop a new cricket range.

Clarke will travel to the US next month to help with the design process and the US company, which has been making baseball mitts since 1887, is expected to launch a Clarke-endorsed modified mitt for cricket fielding drills, along with thin gloves to use during catching practice (as pictured above).

The announcement comes as Australia's interest in baseball has been piqued by the transformation of the SCG for the visit of Major League Baseball teams the LA Dodgers and Arizona Diamondbacks.

"I'm honored to be able to partner with such an iconic American brand," Clarke said in a statement released by Rawlings. "I'm excited about this partnership with Rawlings, my visit to the United States next month, and developing the Michael Clarke line of Rawlings fielders' gloves."

It's not yet clear if Rawlings will attempt to revolutionise wicketkeeping gloves in line with a baseball feel, and any attempt would require a change in the Laws of Cricket with strict conditions governing the gloves wicketkeepers can use.

Law 40.2 deals with the specifications for wicketkeeping gloves, and states that gloves "shall have no webbing between the fingers except joining index finger and thumb, where webbing may be inserted as a means of support". The rules are also specific about the webbing.