ENGLAND'S NEXT BIG THING - Part III: Focussed Clarke not looking too far ahead

SAM MORSHEAD speaks to Worcestershire's Joe Clarke, who after a lean winter with the Lions, produced the goods in the North-South series in Barbados

For a young man in the spotlight, Joe Clarke feels very much shrouded in shadows.

The Worcestershire batsman, one of a cluster of twenty-something Englishmen hoping that a fine first month in the County Championship will lead to international recognition, insists he has not felt the glare of media and fan focus over the past 12 months, as his stock has steadily continued to rise.

After a lean winter with England Lions, big contributions for the ECB’s North side in their series win over the South mean Clarke is among the pacesetters going into the new domestic campaign.

With the England top order as fragile as it has been for some time, the possibility of elevation into the senior team is not lost on the 21-year-old but he is adamant that one thing and one thing only will ensure he makes himself selectable come the first Test of the summer.

“I’m just trying to get on with trying to perform and see where it takes me. Hopefully mass of runs will take care of itself,” Clarke tells The Cricketer.

“I honestly don’t feel as though I’ve had a lot of media, but that’s probably someone who doesn’t really look at it.

“I’ve had a lot of people say that it’s not good to look into that too far. There have been cases where lads have had their names thrown in the hat and then had extra pressure to score runs.

“That certainly won’t be the case for me. If I score a lot of runs, it will look after itself.”

Among the England top five, only Joe Root’s name now seems concreted to the teamsheet but Clarke does not want to succeed because of others’ failures. Admirably, he says he would much prefer to earn the right to pull on the Three Lions than be the default reserve.

JOE CLARKE

County: Worcestershire

Age: 21

First-class: 47 matches, 2,983 runs, ave 41.43, 9 100s, 13 50s, HS 194

List A: 39 matches, 1,084 runs, ave 32.84, 2 100s, 5 50s, HS 131*

T20: 27 matches, 624 runs, s/r 152.19, ave 26.00

He says: “Personally, you try not to look that far ahead. You’re in a bad place if I was to be looking at (Alastair) Cook or whoever and thinking ‘he’s failing and I should be chasing him’.

“Genuinely, I know it sounds cliched, it’s about concentrating on myself and Worcester, trying to start well. A mass of runs will do it for me, not looking for someone else to fail.

“You have to believe that if you bang out runs then it will happen for you.”

Clarke’s 920 runs at an average of 43.81 in Division Two last season played a major part in Worcestershire’s promotion.

If he can produce similar performances in the top rung of the English domestic structure, a chance will surely eventually arrive.

At 21, Clarke has already amassed 47 first-class career appearances and just shy of 3,000 runs in red-ball cricket. It is a formidable haul for someone so young.

His coach at Worcester, Kevin Sharp, knows a thing or two about bright talents, having mentored a teenaged Joe Root at Yorkshire, and he believes the batsman can go as far as emulating the current England skipper.

“Joe (Clarke) is a quick learner. He’s only young but when you get these experiences in the bag, you learn from them,” Sharp tells The Cricketer.

“His work ethic is very good, he desperately wants to be an international at all levels, he’s quite single-minded - and that doesn’t mean selfish, it means his focus is good. He’s a team man but he’s also very good as an individual. I think you need that to be at the top level.

“He believes in himself and that’s important too.”

CLARKE ON… THE LIONS SQUAD

“It’s a hard environment. Everyone is competing with each other on an individual level and everyone is looking to play for England.

“My closest friends from the groups have been other batters who I’ve been competing with.

“It’s down to you and you personally. On the day or over the course of the winter, you’ve got to be better than everyone else.”

The winter tour of the Caribbean did not begin as Clarke would have wanted, his meagre returns with the bat echoing those of the Lions team as a whole.

He made just one score of more than 31 in six knocks spread over three ‘Test’ matches against West Indies A before recovering with 46, 71 and 112 in the one-day series between North and South, played out in front of senior members of the England setup.

“If you bang out runs in county cricket you’re always looked at, especially if you’ve been involved in a Lions series,” he says, when asked whether he feels county cricket or representative games such as the North-South games place him more prominently in the selection window.

“You’ve seen lads who haven’t been involved in England cricket or Lions cricket - someone like Mark Stoneman - churning out runs in county cricket and now he’s playing for England.

“Whether you do it in county cricket or North vs South - they seem about equal. As long as they (the selectors) see you do it and they like what they see, and think you have what you need to perform at the next level, then you’re set.”

So, over time can Clarke really match Root? Or is that a wild and unfair comparison at this stage of their respective careers?

“I met Joe at 12 years old and knew straight away there was something very special about him; the way he knew his strengths, his lesser strengths, what he needed to work on,” says Sharp.

“He was always preparing for the next level, even at 12 years old, all the way through his development. That has to be intrinsic, it has to come from within. Some have got that at some haven’t, it’s almost like a gift.”

Whether or not Clarke shares that gift is a question which the new season may go some way to answering.