Kim Hughes said it best, declaring the Australian cricket team needed the Shane Warne/Darren Lehmann/Michael Clarke cavalcade like a “hole in the head”.

Hughes joined another ex-skipper Steve Waugh and former fast bowler Rodney Hogg in saying Warne needs to censor his criticism of coach Darren Lehmann for the good of the side.

Australia is on fire – losing only one of their past 15 one-day internationals, and they are about to welcome a couple of key men back from injury, most notably their skipper Clarke.

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Yet all anybody can talk about is Warne having a crack at Lehmann, and whether or not he’s doing it at Clarke’s behest.

The issue that has been the sub-text of the Australian summer – the head-butting between Clarke and the hierarchy at Cricket Australia (CA) – has reared its ugly head again.

On November 24, Clarke was embroiled in a fight with CA over his availability for the first Test against India.

CA wanted him to play a two-day game against India to prove his fitness, while Clarke – as he does – wanted to go his own way and play a Sydney grade match.

A day later, Phillip Hughes was struck in the neck by a bouncer, and suddenly none of it mattered any more.

Thick as thieves: Clarke and Warne. Photo: Getty

But another back and hamstring injury during the delayed first Test, and the setting of an ambitious timeline for his recovery for the World Cup, has thrust the issue back into the spotlight.

On January 26, Sydney Morning Herald chief sports writer Andrew Webster wrote of the impending “hurricane that is forming ahead of the World Cup and onwards to July to an Ashes defence on English soil“.

“Clarke is at war with his superiors,” Webster wrote.

Michael Clarke has always presented a cultural challenge for Australian cricket.

He is different. Different from Border, different from Taylor and Waugh and Ponting.

His former teammate Glenn McGrath once described him as a ‘Julio’ in a club full of ‘nerds’.

Getting engaged to Lara Bingle, being an underwear model and his craving of celebrity trappings make him a poster boy for modernity – he was possibly as close as Australian sport had to David Beckham.

Then, during the Test series against India, he went all meta on us – commentating for Channel Nine on a team he still led. It was bizarre.

Yet at the heart of Clarke’s issue, it seems, is a yearning for days gone by – he feels the job of Australian cricket captain is the most important in the game.

His good mate Warne – a man notoriously dismissive of administrators – feels the same way, declaring Lehmann (himself about as old school as can be tolerated in this day and age) was undermining the office of skipper.

Warne referred to the Boxing Day Test at the MCG, when it was believed Lehmann had made the decision to declare, rather than stand-in skipper Steve Smith.

“He’s got to remember that’s the captain’s job not the coach’s job,” Warne said.

“The captain is in charge and it’s something Australian cricket has to look at it with the way they want to do things – who is in charge.”

Smith, however, said it was he in fact who made the decision to declare at the MCG.

Former cricket greats have advised Warne to butt out of the issue.

Michael Clarke with former fiancee Lara Bingle. Photo: Getty

Kim Hughes said he needed to “pull his head in”.

“Michael needs that like a hole in the head,” Hughes told The Australian.

“Darren Lehmann needs it like a hole in the head. You’d swear to God that Shane Warne is being paid by South Africa or India and the other sides.”

Steve Waugh told News.com.au it was “definitely unsettling for the team”.

Former Test quick Hogg said Warne’s stature in the game made his comments tough to ignore.

“He’s the Bradman of bowling, so when Shane speaks we listen,” Hogg told The New Daily.

“If there is a rift, all Shane’s doing is igniting it.”

But he backed Lehmann to handle the situation.

“Darren doesn’t need Shane to tell him what the boundaries are. He’s streetwise,” Hogg said.

“The problem is that when Shane speaks, we all think he’s representing Michael Clarke.”

If the conspiracy theories are to be believed, CA set Clarke a timeline to prove his fitness that was unrealistic, setting him up to fail.

If that is the case, and it seems a fanciful and not particularly clinical way of deposing a cricket captain, it has backfired badly.

Clarke is ready to resume against New Zealand this weekend in a crucial World Cup clash in Auckland.

His form is scratchy, but his body has obviously convinced the medicos that he is right to go. Lehmann declared he would play in Saturday’s washed out match against Bangladesh.

Australia is about to head into the business end of a World Cup – starting with a heavyweight showdown with New Zealand on Saturday.

If the dressing room is divided, now is the worst possible time for cracks to appear.