Clarke feared career was finished

SYDNEY: Hobbled Australian captain Michael Clarke said Friday he feared his career was finished as he toiled to recover from hamstring surgery.

But the 33-year-old veteran, who will sit out Saturday's World Cup opener against old enemy England, also admitted that if he was forced to quit, then he would accept his fate.

"When scans confirmed I had torn my hamstring (after the last day of the Adelaide Test against India) I thought I might just have played my last game of cricket," Clarke told the Sydney Daily Telegraph.

"I had suffered my fourth hamstring (injury) in six months and my back was flaring up.

"I had just scored a century in memory of my little 'brother' (Phillip Hughes, the Test batsman who died after being hit by a bouncer in a domestic game in November) in a winning Test side.

"If that was to be the end, I thought, I would have no regrets."

Clarke said he had learnt to put his career worries in perspective following the death of Hughes as well as his father's diagnosis of cancer in 2007.

"My attitude changed a lot. 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."

Clarke is expected to return to the Australian team in time for the World Cup game against Bangladesh in Brisbane on February 21.