Former Australian and New South Wales teammates Simon Katich and Michael Clarke were involved in a spat that rocked the Aussie dressing room around the time it happened. Here’s a lowdown about what went wrong between these two excellent international players.
The background to the Clarke-Katich spat
The spat between Clarke and Katich came at the end of the 2008-09 Test season. It hadn’t been a great one for Australia and that might have been bit of a contributing factor to the simmering tensions between the two players.
South Africa had clinched the series by winning the first two Tests before Australia came back to grab the third for a consolation victory. What that had meant was Australia had lost their first home Test series to South Africa.
It had also been Australia’s first home Test series loss since 1992-93 with West Indies having been the last side to have beaten them all those years ago.
When did the Clarke-Katich showdown happen?
Still, despite all of this, there was no foreboding about what was to happen at the end of the third Test of the 2008-09 series at the Sydney Cricket Ground.
Traditionally, Aussie teams have song their team song, ‘Under the Southern Cross, I Stand’ at the end of every Test match they have won. It’s spearheaded by a designated cricketer and over the years, the likes of Rod Marsh, Allan Border, David Boon, Ian Healy, Ricky Ponting, Justin Langer, Michael Hussey, Nathan Lyon (and Alex Carey) have led the chants.
In 2008-09, it was Hussey who was responsible for deciding the time at which the song was going to be sung. Typically it was belted out many hours after the game was over.
What Hussey didn’t know was Clarke had already booked a bar to celebrate the victory and he was getting impatient about the delay in singing the song. After multiple messages to Hussey, who was himself having a good time after the win, Clarke had ended up leaving the stadium when the song was finally played.
But it wasn’t before he had had a physical altercation with Simon Katich.
What exactly transpired between Clarke and Katich?
There are two different versions of this as is usually the case – the Clarke version and the Katich one.
Interestingly, neither of those came out till very late. The first instance of the incident being made public came only a month after it happened. It was revealed to the public that Katich had held Clarke by his throat because the latter preferred his own pre-arranged party as opposed to the team song celebrations.
The Clarke version
In his autobiography that came out in 2016, Clarke revealed that he was under the impression that Katich and Hussey were trying to go out of their ways to make things difficult for him.
In response, Clarke wrote in his book, he said, “Hang on, you’re doing this out of spite, you f—ing dogs. Have the balls to say it to my face.” When goaded by Katich to repeat what he had said, Clarke responded:
“I said have the balls to say it to my face, you weak c—s.”
Katich did not take that too well, grabbing Clarke by his collar whilst at the same time the two had a verbal go at each other.
The Katich version
Katich was asked about the incident in 2018 on a radio show and while he agreed some part of it was to do with Clarke’s anger at the timing of the team song delay, a lot of it was thanks to the personal nature of his comments.
He said:
“But a big part of it from my point of view was what he said to me and the personal nature of what he said.”
Adding to that, Katich also admitted:
“What was said was said and I reacted accordingly. I can’t take that back now. I don’t regret standing up for myself because I certainly wasn’t going to sit there and listen to what he was saying in front of my teammates.”
Katich also said he didn’t think the fault lay at the feet of Lara Bingle, Clarke’s then-fiancé, whom he wanted to go out and meet that night.
Hussey’s role in the flare-up
In an interview with foxsports.com.au, Hussey would admit that he had played an inadvertent role in this ugly altercation. After all, had Hussey completed the post-match singing ritual quickly enough, the bust-up might not have occurred.
He said:
“That was probably partly my fault. I was the leader of the team song, I didn’t realise that Pup was trying to get the team song done to get away.”
What happened after that?
While the pair continued to play in the same team for a couple of years after this incident – and according to Hussey were quite professional about it – Clarke’s elevation of captaincy looked to have changed things around.
Katich’s injury in the second Ashes Test of the 2010-11 series meant that by the time Clarke took over as the captain, he was no longer a part of the Australian cricket’s central contracts.
The left-handed opener would go on to blame Clarke for his ouster. He said:
“You don’t have to be Einstein to figure out that it’s not just the selectors that had a part in sending me on my way. I mean to be brutally honest obviously what happened in the dressing room here a few years ago didn’t help my cause. And obviously the captain and coach are selectors.”
Clarke has emphatically refuted allegations that he had anything to do with Katich losing his central contract. He revealed the selectors had two players to choose from Michael Hussey, Ricky Ponting and Katich and then went with the first two.
Clarke’s other brushes with controversies
Clarke is no stranger to controversy and even after the Katich issue, he has been struggling to keep up with a clean image on and off the field. Here’s a list of a few of his controversies.
- Clarke left the the tour of New Zealand in 2010 midway to meet his then-fiancé Lara Bingle after the two of them ended up having a public spat. It wasn’t viewed as proper optics for a player who was expected to become a captain in the future.
- There was a Homeworkgate controversy which involved him and coach Mickey Arthur, with four of the Aussie players getting dropped from a Test in India for not doing their ‘homework’.
- Like Katich, Clarke is said to have had an alleged issue with his vice-captain Shane Watson too. He had described a few of the players including Watson “a tumour” which if not fixed would turn into a “cancer”.
- Clarke was the Aussie captain when he unleashed Mitchell Johnson at the English batsmen and would later go on to threaten James Anderson in the Brisbane Test, “Get ready for a broken f**** arm.”
- He has also been accused from time to time of being aloof when the chips have been down, both as a player, captain or in his personal life.
- South African speedster Dale Steyn and Clarke got involved in an argument that spiralled out of control so badly that Steyn said he hadn’t spoken to the Aussie since then because he had gotten too personal.
- Having injured himself in the 2014 Test against India, Clarke was racing against time to get fit for the 2015 World Cup. There was a lot of acrimony in the lead-up to that tournament between Clarke and members of Cricket Australia, chief selector and coach.
- In 2023, Clarke was filmed in an altercation with his then-girlfriend Jade Yarbrough in Noosa in Queensland. In the video, Yarbrough was seen accusing Clarke of cheating her with an ex-girlfriend and slapping him across his face. It is said to have cost Clarke a $150,000 commentary contract with the BCCI.