Clarke caught up in accidental sex talk

Michael Clarke has joined his coach in referring to sex when asked questions about cricket in NZ.

Two days into Australia's tour of New Zealand and already coach and captain have turned questions about cricket into discussions about sex.

First it was Australia coach Tim Nielsen, who unfortunately said the word sex when he meant to say success.

"To be honest, we haven't had a huge amount of sex... um, success, the last two times we've travelled here," Nielsen told reporters on Wednesday at Wellington airport.

Twenty20 skipper Michael Clarke stayed on message with his coach by shocking reporters at Wellington's Basin Reserve on Thursday with a comment about bondage, Kiwi style.

Asked if New Zealand's Shane Bond remained one of the finest pace bowlers in limited-overs cricket, Clarke said the 34-year-old was still a top-class player and the Australians would do their homework.

Although it started to sound more like watching blue movies than cricket tapes.

"We'll have a good look at the footage, bondage, um, Bondy," Clarke said, breaking into an embarrassed grin.

"I feel like the coach! What's going on?"

He tried to get through the sentence again, concentrating hard on cleaning it up this time.

"We'll have a good look at footage of Shane Bond. But yeah he has got a lot of class," Clarke said, joking as he left his press conference that he could just imagine what the front-pages of newspapers would look like after an accidental comment like that.

But while the Australia T20 captain's every move might be big news back home, it doesn't rate so highly in New Zealand.

The Dominion Post carried a large photograph on its back page on Thursday of "Michael Clarke" arriving at Wellington airport in dark sunglasses, although it did look a lot like his Australia team-mate Brad Haddin.