Australia v India 2014: New captain Steve Smith needs teammates’ support to succeed

THE fate of Steve Smith’s Test captaincy will simply be a matter of whether the side’s senior players fully accept his appointment.

BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA - DECEMBER 16: Australian Test captain Steve Smith poses with his captain's blazer during a portrait session at The Gabba on December 16, 2014 in Brisbane, Australia. Smith will tomorrow become Australia's 45th Test captain when he leads out his side against India. (Photo by Ryan Pierse/Getty Images)

THE fate of Steve Smith’s Test captaincy is unlikely to be decided by a funky field setting, a cheeky declaration or even his own batting form.

It will simply be a matter of whether the side’s senior players fully accept his appointment. If they want Smith to succeed he will.

Captaincy announcements, particularly ones like this involving a sudden and unexpected change in the pecking order, can do strange things to the fabric of cricket teams.

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Steve Smith. Picture: Annette Dew

On Saturday afternoon we watched in united joy as the Australian team celebrated their victory against India in Adelaide by forming a huddle so tight it seemed as if they could have fitted in a phone box.

But when a leadership post is on the line in cricket it’s very much every man for himself.

Teammates suddenly become rivals and senior players who miss out can get very disappointed and some never really recover.

No one has to tell this to chairman of selectors Rod Marsh who fell out badly with Kim Hughes, seven years his junior, when Hughes was preferred as Australian captain.

Hughes was given a brutal time from senior players but, to his credit, refuses to carry grudges.

Hughes hides the pain well. He has forgiven but has never forgotten.

Not long back he picked up a copy of Christian Ryan’s outstanding book Kim Hughes and The Bad Old Days of Australian Cricket that forensically examines the Hughes era.

Hughes read about a third of the book before deciding he did not want to revisit the painful past. He put the book down and has never returned to it though is not unhappy that friends have read it because they now have a clearer picture of what he had to put up with.

Steve Smith must support Josh Hazlewood and the Australian bowling attack in the second Test.

There is no such tension about Smith’s appointment but human nature being what it is there must be senior players in the team who would have relished the chance to be the man at the coin toss today.

Smith handled his first pre-match press conference as skipper with aplomb yesterday, sounding calm and clear-headed with a splash of courage with the announcement he would move from five to four in the batting order.

As Smith grows into the captaincy role, particularly after Michael Clarke retires, it is easy to imagine Mitchell Marsh becoming a crucial ally.

Two years younger than Smith and logically the man who might follow Smith into the role, Marsh is shaping as an anchorman of the next generation and, one day, Smith’s vice-captain.

Marsh’s father Geoff was a key pillar of a turbulent Australian cricket era in the 1980s as a trusted, stout-hearted vice-captain to Allan Border and now his youngest son may be destined to play a similar role.

Smith has been a Test leader for just two days yet already has witnessed some landmark decisions.

The sacking of Peter Siddle from the Test side may signal the end of the Victorian’s honourable career.

Smith enters the captaincy at a perfect time with Australia one up in the series entering a Test at the Gabba where they always feel they have cloak of invincibility.

Ryan Harris and Steve Smith take part in a fielding drill.

The well-grassed deck looks a typical Gabba gem and a world away from the dusty decks of India.

Several Indian batsmen looked as anguished as a motorist opening a speeding ticket in the mail when they crouched over it on Monday.

There is another school of thought that a green wicket could be the only way India can win a Test on tour because their bowling attack simply lacks the collective claws to threaten Australia on flat wickets.

But a victory would be a massive effort on a deck which Mitchell Johnson created such carnage against England last summer that the roars were heard at a shopping centre two suburbs away.

Originally published as Australia v India 2014: New captain Steve Smith needs teammates’ support to succeed