Rikki Clarke, a brilliant county cricketer

NICK FRIEND: In isolation, the reason for his retirement might sound like a pragmatic, almost unsatisfactory ending to a career that might – in another life – have spawned plenty more than 22 international appearances

Just like Daryl Mitchell and Ryan ten Doeschate, Rikki Clarke was meant to be invincible. He was meant to go on forever as a reliable constant amid an ever-changing landscape. A veteran of a pre-Twenty20 age, who played with Ollie Pope but also against Jack Russell, whose first and last County Championship wickets were separated by 6,991 days.

His retirement, then, messes with what we thought we knew. But it also speaks to the fragile mortality of the professional athlete life.

“Could I carry on playing? Yes,” Clarke tells The Cricketer. “Could I do a Darren Stevens? Probably not.”

In short, there is still much left in the tank, even if Stevens has implanted a miraculous, irrational barometer, where 45 is the new 26 and age – like never before – is a complete irrelevance. Michael Hogan, 40, was the linchpin of Glamorgan’s Royal London Cup triumph only a matter of weeks back. Tim Murtagh, 40, took 58 first-class wickets this season, the third full campaign in a row that has brought him more than 50.

Before leaving Surrey to explore the circuit, Clarke and Murtagh were teammates, playing together on Clarke’s red-ball debut against Cambridge UCCE two months after the death of the Queen Mother – a game that featured both Adrian Shankar and Ian Ward. The longevity truly is extraordinary: 19 summers ago, he was James Anderson’s second first-class victim – there have been 1,016 since.

“Professional cricket has been a major part of my life for 21 years,” he knows. He worries about missing it – not the warmups or the preseason training, he clarifies, though perhaps those sentiments will come with the passing of time.

Instead, it is the camaraderie among teammates and the game itself that will be hardest to replicate. “That’s the sort of thing that everyone who has retired has had to go through. I’m not the first and I won’t be the last. I’ve made friendships for life through the game of cricket.”

Clarke ends his career as a 39-year-old, turning 40 five days after its conclusion. But age has nothing to do with this decision. In fact, a significant slice of pride is rooted in the fact that he is going out on his own terms, before his performances have become a burden or a sense of spare part has dawned on him. “I always had it in my head that I wanted this rather than a captain saying you’re no good anymore or your body shutting down and being released or sacked,” he says.

And this is the long and short of it; Clarke has decided he must go now because there is an opportunity waiting for him. Most aren’t so lucky. The transition out of elite sport has rightly emerged as an increasingly spotlighted issue in recent times. Part of a five-year deal agreed between the ECB and PCA in 2019 included a new pot for players leaving the game – those who retired last year received their first payments in April and May.

^{Rikki Clarke celebrates with James Anderson and Vikram Solanki, his head coach at Surrey, in one of 22 England appearances}

He was going to move to Dubai with his father to work in property, until a call came in that changed everything. On the back of it, Clarke is about to become director of cricket at St Edward’s School, Witley, which was already one of the venues used by his cricket academy. “I’m going into a wonderful job,” he explains. And a job, he knows, that might not exist if he waits another year or five for his eyes to fail him.

“I just thought about whether that role would be there next year. The body feels brilliant, I’m very rarely injured. I still feel like I’m performing, getting wickets and scoring runs. I’ve got years in me to play the county game if I wanted; it was just the opportunity to go into a job at a school that’s available now.

“But if I stayed on and the body shut down or performances went, where would I be next October? I was always a bit of a realist that there are 18 counties and for the majority of the time, they all employ from within, so the chances would be very limited. I had to make the decision of making that transition now. I just felt that I’ve had a great career and it’s time to move on.”

In isolation, that might sound like a pragmatic, almost unsatisfactory ending to a career that might – in another life – have spawned plenty more than 22 international appearances. Alec Stewart has been on the record to say that his former allrounder – both as captain and coach – ought to have played in 75 Tests. Clarke’s is the phlegmatic take of a man satisfied with his lot: “Could it have been different for me, or could I have played more for England, who knows? It was probably just meant to be.”

This interview, a few days out from his final appearance, was one of several across his penultimate Friday as a professional cricketer that was otherwise a designated day off. “I suppose I must have done something right along the way,” he jokes, referencing the interest in his last hurrah.

Clarke reckoned he would be “a blubbering wreck” when time was called at the Kia Oval to complete a dead rubber between Surrey and Glamorgan that was heading for a draw almost from the first ball. He was given guards of honour as he strode to the crease and when he walked off once a farcical encounter had sunk to a close.

That he was not out when hands were shaken made for a lovely ending, although facing the bowling of Chris Cooke, the visiting wicketkeeper, after more than 1,300 runs had been scored across two first-innings efforts on an uber-placid pitch might just rank among the more forgettable of his 745 professional innings. When the dust settles, however, it will be the scene out in the middle once the smattering of spectators had departed – the Surrey squad sat in a circle on the square as the sun began to set – that remains with him from a game that was always likely to present an emotional test. His pre-match wish? “I just need to enjoy the last four days.”

^{Clarke leaves the field alongside Morne Morkel after clinching the victory over Worcestershire that won Surrey the 2018 County Championship}

Because, beneath this decision’s sound reasoning, there sits an enormous vat of fond memories.

“You always hope and dream that you’ll have an amazing career and play for twenty years,” he reflects. “It sounds like a cliché but all through my career I’ve just taken each year as it comes. Particularly when you’re younger, you see players come and go, so why would you be any different? Because of that, I’ve just always tried to put in the best performances I can to keep on getting those contracts. And then, each year goes along and it’s another one ticked off. And another one ticked off. And another one.

“From the second I made the decision, I knew it was time to move on and go into something new. Everyone says you’ll regret it, but at this moment in time I don’t at all.” That sentiment was perhaps never truer than after 177 overs in the field across two days, at which point Glamorgan declared. As goes Mother Cricket, Clarke went wicketless through 17 overs, some of those with Ben Foakes standing up to the stumps.

But fate also allowed him to bring the curtain down at the same ground as it all began. Although Clarke left for Derbyshire – for one season – and then subsequently for Warwickshire, where he enjoyed nine fruitful years, it was well-documented that he never wanted to leave Surrey in the first place. And so, it was fitting that he should return to the club he initially joined when he was nine in time to win his third County Championship title in 2018 – he was at the crease to seal the deal against Worcestershire – 16 years after his first crown.

“I’ve always seen myself as quite a loyal person,” he says. So much so that he believes “there is every chance I’d still be there now” at Derbyshire if that particular move had worked out.

“Unfortunately, it didn’t work and I went to Warwickshire, where I had nine fantastic years, where I grew as a player and as a person a lot more under the leadership Ashley Giles and Jim Troughton.”

For his reinvention and – consequently – his endurance, he credits Graeme Welch, Warwickshire’s bowling coach, whose stock has only further grown in recent days and weeks, having overseen the seam attack of the champion county. He changed Clarke – from a batting allrounder into a reliable, metronomic option who, having never taken more than 22 wickets in a season between 2002 and 2009, proceeded to pick up hauls of 42, 43, 46, 47 and 47 in 2016, 2019, 2011, 2015 and 2018.

^{The end...}

That transition was partially born out of the situation at Surrey, where he walked into a team as its precocious 20-year-old without a care in the world nor, indeed, a particular wad of responsibility. Surrey were simply so strong that Clarke was their luxury item: an English allrounder capable of match-winning innings and game-turning spells. He was in England’s squad for the Champions Trophy after 10 first-class appearances, flying to Sri Lanka with the likes of Stewart, Nasser Hussain and Nick Knight.

He recalls: “I was like: ‘Okay, how has this happened and why am I here?’ All my performances had been in first-class cricket and I found myself on a one-day tour. That was quite difficult. I don’t think that stopped my development, but I didn’t know what sort of cricketer I was. I didn’t know my game, but I found myself at international level straight away, having to learn on my feet.”

For Surrey, his primary job was to score runs; if they needed to break a partnership that none of Martin Bicknell, James Ormond, Saqlain Mushtaq nor Ian Salisbury could breach, Clarke – raw and sometimes wayward – was the trump card. Such was the chaos of the national side at that time, his role with England was closer to the opposite. “I didn’t set the world alight by any stretch of the imagination, but I didn’t let myself down either,” he remembers.

Clarke, “a human mountain range” – so wrote Tanya Aldred three years ago, doesn’t seem like one for regrets or rewriting history, but he has wondered on occasion what might have been. Ironically, he believes his cricket improved when he stopped doing so. Still, now is as good a time as any to ponder how differently things could have turned out.

A guard of honour for Rikki Clarke, a great county cricketer in his final hours as a pro. He'll be facing Hamish Rutherford's left-arm spin. pic.twitter.com/rq6zRmKz6h

— Nick Friend (@NickFriend1) September 24, 2021

“If I had been left for a couple of years, I might have developed as a cricketer better and understood my game better, which would have allowed me to maybe have a longer career with England and potentially play more,” he says, piecing together what he has learnt since those early years.

“But this was probably the way my career was meant to be.”

There can’t be many men for whom the gap between final international cap and retirement from the game has been so long: in Clarke’s case, that quirk spanned 15 years, albeit with an England Lions call-up and a place in a provisional 30-man squad for the 2013 Champions Trophy. That was as good as it got, but he accepted it. “I had hopes, but I never realistically felt that it would come again,” he says. “That just allowed me to take the pressure off and be a good county pro.”

He became a better player for it and focused his mind on winning everything there was to win: as well as three County Championship medals, he won the Blast twice and two Lord’s finals. “That’s without the ones I’ve been part of where we’ve lost along the way: I’ve been to seven or eight T20 Finals Days,” he laughs.

“I’m pretty sure that I’m someone who matured later in a cricketing sense – and in everything actually. I’m probably still maturing! I was eager to prove people wrong and I was going about it the wrong way; so, when I was first dropped by England, it was a case of: ‘Right, I’ll show you.’

“I was trying to smash hundreds without hardly facing a ball. I probably played the best shot of the innings but not the best innings. I was trying to get wickets with every ball. I was looking for the end product rather than the processes that got me there in the first place. I wasn’t playing each ball as it came or being disciplined. It got to a stage where I thought: ‘Well look, it’s realistically probably not going to happen.’”

From that point, he cracked it to such an extent that he bows out as a professional cricketer with 17,944 runs, 805 wickets and 591 catches to his name – the reputation as the domestic game’s best slip-fielder well and truly secured. The secret? “Practice,” he says. “I did backward point and then they chucked me in at slip because apparently I’m a decent catcher.” That might just be the greatest understatement of the lot.

“There is no amazing formula to it,” he insists. “But if you want to get better, that’s what you have to do.”

^{Clarke, furthest right: the best slip fielder in the county game}

The Oval is a big ground, which often makes an attendance difficult to gauge. But the love in the air was palpable as Clarke walked towards the edge of the outfield one final time, this time flanked by his teammates in the second guard of honour of an emotional afternoon. Jade Dernbach, his best mate, followed behind him – he is also departing, eighteen years after his own debut. Clarke paid tribute to him and then to Mark Church, the club’s long-time commentator, thanking him on the field for two decades’ support. The previous evening, Surrey handed honorary lifetime membership to Clarke – an honour only previous bestowed upon Kumar Sangakkara. Dernbach received the same privilege.

“Lots of people are driven by different things,” Clarke reflects. “For me, it was always trying to do the best I can and trying to win trophies for the sides I was playing with.

“Do the best you can in your role to allow your side to be in a better position in the game. If you’re in a better position in a game, you’ve got more chance of winning. That’s a knock-on effect: if you’re winning games, you’re putting yourself in the shop window.”

Then, he offers an emotional chuckle, as if the finality of it all has kicked in.

“It’s never going to happen again, is it? I just have to look at it and say I’ve had 21 years and 22 seasons as a professional that I can look back on very fondly and proudly. I gave it my all and I enjoyed every last minute of it.”