Michael Clarke shows his anguish after hurting his back while batting. Photo: Getty Images

You can't blame Michael Clarke for wanting to play in the Adelaide Test, and it's hard to blame Cricket Australia for letting him. But it was always going to be a gamble, and now both the Australian captain and the selectors have to live with the consequences.

No one could have anticipated the circumstances that have turned the game upside down over the past fortnight. Phillip Hughes' death changed everything.

Before, Clarke and the selectors were at odds about how he should show his hamstring was up to a Test.

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But when Darren Lehmann declared four days before the rescheduled Adelaide match that "we want our captain out there", no one who had seen the distraught captain's strength since Hughes' accident would have begrudged him the chance. 

The revised schedule gave Clarke extra time to get fit, but it also meant there was no game in which to prove his fitness. The tour match between a Cricket Australia XI and the Indians, which the selectors initially wanted him to play in, was postponed.

Grade cricket in Sydney was cancelled as the players in Hughes' home state grieved, and the next round of Sheffield Shield games was pushed back to coincide with the Adelaide Test.

In the absence of match practice, Lehmann said Clarke just had to prove he could run and bat. He did that, and looked strong at training, but the Australian team's physiotherapist, Alex Kountouris, has said before that Clarke's back and hamstring problems, which are related, can flare up at any time.

This time it was an innocuous twisting movement that made his back seize up to the point that he could not carry on. 

Honouring Hughes in Adelaide meant everything to Clarke. He wore a long-sleeved playing shirt, like his "little brother" Hughes, instead of his customary short-sleeved one.

His wife, father and grandfather were at Adelaide Oval to watch and his brief but poignant glance skywards when he reached 50 suggested he wasn't finished; he intended to join David Warner on three figures.

His long, slow walk from the field hinted at his devastation at being forced to retire hurt.

In normal circumstances, Clarke would not have played on such slender preparation, having understandably put his usual rehab on the backburner until after the funeral. 

But the past fortnight has been anything but normal. Now we wait for the consequences; for this match, for Clarke's future, for the rest of the summer.