Clarke has made the stunning admission that before his famous 329 not-out appearance, he was on the brink of being dropped.

It was read out to him in an email - one he was not supposed to receive.

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“I drove to the team hotel, had breakfast there and saw Mickey Arthur and he asked if he could speak to me,” he told Sky Sports Big Sports Breakfast.

“I said jump in the car and we’ll go to the ground together.

“As we were driving he read an email to me that was sent to him from the chairman of selectors at the time.

“He read it to me and long story short, it pretty much said that I’d been out of form, they were worried about my own individual form being affected by the captaincy and I think if he makes no runs we’re going to have to have the conversation about dropping him.”

While it is the kind of revelation that could have easily led to the unravelling of most, Clarke took the criticism as a personal challenge to go out and prove the selectors wrong - and he did just that.

“I respected Mickey Arthur for having the courage to read it to me even though he didn’t want to because he didn’t want to make life any more difficult for me in the lead-up to an important Test match and put any more pressure on me,” he said.

“But as captain of the team it was the right thing to do and was certainly something I wasn’t aware of.