Australian of the Year: Tim Paine at the top of his game

Tim Paine has spent much of the past year righting a sinking ship.

Tim Paine has led the Australian cricket team back to glory. Picture: AAP

Tim Paine has had a terrific 2019.

After inheriting the captaincy of the Australian Test cricket team in March last year — without doubt one of the worst years in the country’s proud cricket history — Paine spent most of the past year righting a sinking ship.

Just four months into his ­return to Test cricket following a seven-year absence, the 35-year-old was left to pick up the pieces in the wake of the ball-tampering scandal that cost Steve Smith the top job.

The team limped through 2018 without Smith and David Warner, and lost series to Pakistan and India.

But under Paine’s leadership, 2019 has been a triumphant year for the Australian team, earning the country’s 46th Test captain a nomination for this newspaper’s Australian of the Year award.

The team won or drew every series it played in this year and is poised to jump to second in the Test rankings. That included the drawn series against England to retain the Ashes on English soil for the first time in 18 years.

While he’s struggled to make runs at times, it is clear that Paine plays his cricket firstly as captain, secondly as keeper and thirdly as a batsman.

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Yet the Tasmanian is still one of the world’s best wicketkeepers and has contributed to the team’s run tally when needed, such as the way he attacked New Zealand’s bowlers from the moment he stepped behind the crease last week to score a quick-fire 79 runs.

A junior star who made his Test debut in 2010, Paine was on the outside of the national set-up for several years until 2017 when he returned to the T20 team and, later that year, the Test line-up.

Paine has brought out the best of the players around him, making the team dangerous with both bat and ball.

He has been integral to ­improving the way the team is viewed in the eyes of the public by improving the side’s on-field ­behaviour.

The captain is also a master sledger, but without the nastiness overheard from other players in recent years.

While Smith has returned to the team, Paine has shown there’s more to his tenure than holding the fort.

There was conviction in the way Paine shrugged off Ian Chappell’s suggestions earlier this month that Smith may have been “white-anting” Paine’s captaincy through subtle fielding ­adjustments.

All of this from a man who was close to walking away from the game shortly before his Test ­recall in 2017.

We encourage our readers to put in a nomination for The Australian’s Australian of the Year, which was first won in 1971 by economist HC “Nugget” Coombs. Prominent Australians can be nominated by filling out the coupon above, or sending an email to [e-mail] or going to our website, theaustralian.com.au. Nominations close on Thursday, January 23.