Happy memories fade for Clarke

It has been said that happiness is a memory, not a feeling, something remembered more vividly than it is experienced. Watching Michael Clarke bat at Trent Bridge, in what was surely one of his final Test innings, it was possible to wonder how long it has been since he felt happy about batting, or even cricket.

Clarke has always stated he is mediocre of memory. He has been forever hurtling forward, often at a speed that others, whether they be team-mates, opponents or the Australian public, have not appreciated. But as he struggled and scraped and ultimately fell here to the moving ball once more, he must have thought back to when his hands and feet moved in sync, his head was clear and his body limber. It was quite some time ago.

Just as this innings was a case of Clarke being worn down, his captaincy has also followed a line of depreciating returns. He started as a leader in the pinkest of form, rolling to hundreds as though it was the most natural thing in the world. Clarke made 12 in his first 30 Tests as captain, starting with a last-day century to secure a draw (remember them?) and a series win over Sri Lanka, and ending with a first-innings standard bearer to effectively seal the 2013-14 Ashes series in Adelaide. There were three double hundreds, and one monumental triple at the SCG against India.

Before this match, Clarke said he had been watching plenty of footage of those innings. He was doing so to remind himself that he has often been a chancy starter, gambling on attack to place pressure on the bowlers before he is fully set. The 329 against India was the epitome of this, as Clarke's early minutes were punctuated by dicey play-and-misses against Zaheer Khan and Ishant Sharma on a surface where his team had slid to 37 for 3.

The difference then was that Clarke would emerge from his flighty start to be assured and confident, putting the bowlers off balance while looking beautifully calibrated himself. Now, however, every ball is a struggle, whether with the bowler, the conditions or the doubts he clearly has about his own mobility, regardless of how many scans or consultancies have told him he is fit and fine.

It has been a slow decline, not only in terms of batting but also influence over the team. The seeds of his current malaise were arguably sown on the last Ashes tour, when Mickey Arthur was replaced by Darren Lehmann. From that day, Clarke was no longer a selector, while the dominance of Lehmann's personality and view of the world compelled the captain to take a back seat to many decisions he was previously across.

The change worked for a time, culminating in the successes of 2013-14, but as results became more inconsistent and Clarke less physically capable, his more peripheral role dovetailed with his performances. Clarke remains the captain, but he has long since ceased to be the man in charge. Between April 2011 and June 2013 the Australian side was his team, for better or worse. Now it is not, for better or worse.

Among the briefest but most telling interludes of Clarke's innings was his two-ball union with Steven Smith, the man who will replace him. Smith has been emblematic of Australia in this series - brilliant at Lord's but skittish, troubled and verging on neurotic elsewhere. His trigger movement across the crease is now hopelessly exaggerated, and he batted in a fury both innings here.

The Smith and Clarke relationship has never been poor, but the lack of any sense that the two leaders, present and future, could dig in this day was telling. Rewind four years to the 2011 World Cup quarter-final with India, when Clarke played a dreadful shot to get out at a time when he and his predecessor Ricky Ponting had to form a partnership. In the preceding Ashes series they had competed with one another for poorest aggregate, with Ponting narrowly shading it in the end.

This time around, Smith contained himself for one delivery in Clarke's presence, but not another. His sliced drive nestled into the hands of Ben Stokes, positioned precisely for the stroke Smith played - a depressingly dunderheaded piece of batting. Clarke has seldom generated the sense of warmth that engenders others to play for him. In this moment of gravest need, Smith could think of nothing but attack.

That left Clarke to potter around in the company of Adam Voges, another man who has struggled mightily this series. There was a time when Voges was not chosen for Australia's limited-overs middle order partly because he was deemed too similar a player to Clarke, and now they scratched around with similarly low levels of confidence. For 38 runs they tried to endure, scoring through as many edges as meatier blows, until Clarke could contain himself no longer and essayed a push out at the ball a little less hare-brained than the first innings, but no more distinguished.

Clarke has spoken that one of the keys to his batting has been his use of songs in his head to switch off between deliveries. The tunes have varied widely, often being sourced from batting partners in the middle. As he walked off Trent Bridge this day, he looked very much like a man who had forgotten the words to one of his favourite tracks. The Turtles' Happy Together has long since slipped off his playlist.