Proud Clarke lost in the moment

It was for others to speculate about the chances of his men, so roundly pilloried after the India debacle earlier in the year, emulating the golden team of 2006-07 and completing a five-nil Ashes whitewash.

It was for another time to expand on how his stated aim of returning Australia to the mantle of the world’s top Test team might be achieved, given his next assignment is to lead a touring party against the vaunted South Africans on their home turf.

After the tumult he and Australian cricket had endured throughout 2013, and having been whipped in three previous Ashes campaigns by an England team that revelled in its mastery this was simply an occasion to sit back and enjoy the rewards of some hard work.

He had just seen burly men, hardened in the school of international sport, shed tears upon securing a century-old trophy roughly the size of an egg cup.

Consequently, the air that Clarke carried into the post-match media conference at the WACA ground was of a proud dad who has just received his kids’ better-than-dreamed exam results.

Certainly, the team that Clarke and coach Darren Lehmann have so remarkably lifted from its low ebb of eight months ago has passed its sternest test with an aplomb few outside its inner sanctum dared think possible.

“I’m not looking at it tonight, I can guarantee you that,” Clarke said when asked for his thoughts on whether his team could follow in the footsteps of Ponting, Warne, McGrath, Gilchrist et al who instigated the most recent revenge whitewash seven summers ago.

“I’m going to enjoy three-nil for as long as I can tonight. I think it’s really important that we celebrate together tonight and enjoy this feeling.

“I don’t want to show any disrespect to 2006-07, that was a very special series and I suppose a very different time in my career.

"But being a little bit older and a little greyer, this is just as special and I don’t think it would be fair to compare them.”

The pride that Clarke felt when Australia secured victory by 150 runs 35 minutes after lunch on the final day in Perth to take an unassailable three-nil lead in the five-match series was doubtless heightened by the manner in which it was achieved.

The final wicket fell to Mitchell Johnson, the bowler whose reputation and self-esteem had been laid brutally bare by one of those previous Ashes defeats, but had come back to not only take his place but resume the standing he held as the world’s best player before it all fell apart.

His 23 wickets at 15.47 after three Tests has been the catalyst for the largely unforeseen shift in the balance of power between the game’s great enduring rivals.

The final catch was taken by George Bailey, who this summer became Australia’s oldest Test debutant in more than a generation but has fitted snugly into the aggressive, combative brand of cricket that Lehmann and Clarke have been so hell-bent on overseeing.

And the way that wicket came – England’s chief tormentor of series past, James Anderson, fending yet another rib-tickler off his upper body in a desperate act of self-preservation – was symptomatic of the hard-nosed, win-at-all-costs mindset that seems to have caught England on the hop.

“We certainly haven’t tried to play any different or be any tougher,” Clarke said.

“We know how we play our best cricket and we’ve tried to play like that.

“I guess though, over years if you play and you don’t have success and you’re not performing as well as you would like as an individual player or as a team, and you’re not getting the wins, you get to a stage where you get sick of losing.

“Or you get to a stage where you get sick of not scoring runs or not taking wickets. And it goes one of two ways.

“As a player you get dropped, or you find a way to turn it around and have success and I think that’s what this team has done.

“I think every single bloke in that team has found a way to turn it around, and the only way to do that is through hard work and through lots of dedication, lots of sacrifice and putting the team first.”

While paying tribute to everyone involved with the Australian team – players, support staff, management executives, strappers, drinks carriers – he kept returning to the theme of hard work.

He claimed that every personal success he had enjoyed could be traced back to his preparedness to work hard, and he was in no doubt that was the magic ingredient that was behind his team’s sudden upward surge along the form trend line.

“Every single day I get to see how hard these guys are training, the work they are doing on and off the field they’re doing to become better players and a better team,” Clarke said.

“That’s every part of the game, not just batting in the nets or bowling in the nets.

“The guys are fitter, they’re stronger, mentally they’re certainly as well prepared for opposition players as possible and then the work they’re doing in the nets.

“I think you’ve seen throughout this series that individual players have put the team first on every occasion and that’s why we sit here as winners today.

“That’s what makes it so special.”