We were sick of losing, says Clarke

Australia’s transformation over the last three months came about because the players simply got fed up with losing and decided to put in the hard work to turn their fortunes around, captain Michael Clarke said after they won the Ashes on Tuesday.  In March, Clarke was captain of an Australia team in crisis with as many off-field problems as they had on it and soon to lose their coach after a 4-0 series drubbing in India. In August having conceded a third straight Ashes series to the English, he was in charge of a team that had played 10 Tests, lost seven, drawn two and won one in 2013. ‘The way the guys have trained and prepared, that’s not just batting in the nets or bowling in the nets. ‘If you don’t have success, if you’re not performing as you’d like as an individual player or as a team, you get to a place where you get sick of losing, or sick of not getting runs, or not taking wickets,’ he added.