“When scans confirmed I had torn my hamstring, I thought I might just have played my last game of cricket”

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Australia captain Michael Clarke has admitted that he thought his professional cricket career was over when it was revealed that he tore his hamstring at the end of the first Test against India in Adelaide in December last year.

However, Clarke revealed that he would have accepted that his career was over since he scored a gutsy century in his last innings in memory of his team-mate and friend Phillip Hughes, who tragically passed away at the age of 25 in November.

“When scans confirmed I had torn my hamstring, I thought I might just have played my last game of cricket,” Clarke told the Daily Telegraph. “I had suffered my fourth hamstring in six months and my back was flaring up.

“I had just scored a century in memory of my little ‘brother’. If that was to be the end, I thought, I would have no regrets.”

Clarke also revealed that he considered quitting when his father was diagnosed with cancer in 2007.

“My attitude changed a lot,” he said. “To that point I had been totally consumed by cricket. But that all turned upside down the day I learnt dad had Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

“It made me realise that in the grand scheme of life, cricket was just a game.”