Sheffield Shield selectors need to give leadership opportunities to potential Test captains, writes Robert Craddock
Have you heard of Cricket Australia’s new reality show – Who Wants To Be A Test Captain? While the field is wide open, it’s time for the Sheffield Shield selectors to buy in and support their stars.
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It’s time for Australia’s Sheffield Shield selectors to join in cricket’s new reality show … Who Wants To Be A Test Captain?
Pat Cummins should captain NSW in the sole Sheffield Shield match he will play before the first Test against Pakistan at the Gabba next month.
Alex Carey should take over the reins of the South Australian side from Travis Head.
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Tim Paine has done a splendid job as Australian captain and deserves to stay in the side until the term of his natural life, even if it stretches beyond March when Steve Smith’s two-year captaincy ban ends after the ball tampering affair.
In Australia’s hour of need Paine has been a godsend and may never get the credit he fully deserves.
But Australia must plan for life beyond him and the prospect that Smith may not be fully sold on returning to the job or may just simply be left to bat.
Captaincy is the one vacuum where there is often a disconnect between what Australia wants and what the States give them.
It’s quite a strange phenomenon because state officials spend their days pushing up for their batsmen and bowlers to play for Australia yet when it comes to the greatest prize of all – the national captaincy – they can be curiously indifferent to a major opportunity staring them in face.
Many years ago when a touring Australian cricket writer penned a story saying Tasmania should promote a young Ricky Ponting to captain his state to further his prospects of becoming a national captain, he got a sharp-edged phone call from a Tasmanian official telling him to mind his own business.
Test vice-captain Cummins may only be lukewarm about the prospect of being Test captain but if Paine broke a finger in a Test he would have to take over mid-Test barely having captained a side since he was in the under-14s.
He needs to know what it’s like to have his hands on the steering wheel. There is not a single negative to having Cummins captain NSW in a Shield match.
Even if he emerged from the game thinking ‘I’ve just realised I am not suited to captaincy … just let me bowl’, that is still a significant step forward because it takes his name out of the equation and gives Australia extra clarity about the road ahead.
Australia has clearly identified Carey as a future leader by making him Australia A captain, significantly in a team containing Head who was recently named Australian vice-captain.
This is a telling move because it shows the selectors have had a change of heart in their leadership thoughts and rate Carey a better chance of being a Test captain than Head.
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South Australia should take the hint and promote Carey as their Shield captain.
Selection chairman Trevor Hohns barely ever makes public statements about leadership preferences for states so the hint he dropped to Cricinfo about Carey should not be ignored.
“He (Carey) is held in such high regard that I’d seriously like to see him captaining his state, but that’s not for me to say,’’ Hohns said.
No, but he does have a say in the next Test captain and the more options the better.
Originally published as Sheffield Shield selectors need to give leadership opportunities to potential Test captains, writes Robert Craddock