It’s the biggest question facing Australian cricket in the coming weeks – will Pat Cummins the bowler suffer when he takes on the Test captaincy?
Currently the No.1 ranked Test bowler in the world, only James Anderson and Nathan Lyon have taken more wickets since Cummins returned to the game’s longest format in March 2017, although neither comes close to the strike rate of Cummins.
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Although the records of Mitchell Starc (107 wickets at 26.49) and Josh Hazlewood (96 wickets at 27.18) are excellent in the same period, neither can match Cummins’ phenomenal 157 wickets at 21.82, clearly marking the 28-year-old as the leader of Australia’s attack.
Later this week he’ll almost certainly be confirmed as the nation’s 47th Test captain, and the first fast-bowler to take on the role since Ray Lindwall’s one-off appearance in 1956.
How he adjusts will be fascinating to watch, according to another fast-bowler with significant captaincy experience, Geoff Lawson.
“Managing your bowling is the key to it,” the former New South Wales skipper told Wide World of Sports.
“While you’re in the heat of battle you’ve still got to make decisions about where the fielders are placed, the tactics for the next hour or two and of course the bowling changes. You’re always thinking three or four steps ahead.
“There’s a degree of managing yourself, making sure you don’t over-bowl or under-bowl yourself. But that’s why you need good advisers around you, whether that’s another senior bowler at mid-on or mid-off, or the senior players behind the stumps.
“When I was captain of NSW I had the Waugh brothers, Mark Taylor, Phil Emery, lots of good people who would keep an eye on the game while I concentrated on my bowling.”
Lawson said he retained overall control of field placings during his spells, but said frequent conversations with senior players were also helpful to his own bowling.
“You’ve got to be careful of delegating, but certainly suggestions were always welcomed,” he explained.
“I think the captain has to have the final say, I wasn’t too keen on looking up at the top of my bowling mark and finding that I suddenly had four slips instead of two slips, a gully and a cover!
“You certainly take suggestions at the end of an over, and often I would ask the guys what they were seeing and how they thought the game was going.
“You’d get feedback, and often they’d ask how I was going, which worked well as a kind of double check about my bowling.”
Today marks five days since Paine announced his tearful resignation, with just over two weeks remaining until the Ashes starts at the Gabba on December 8.
Lawson dismissed any suggestion that the late change of captain would be a problem for the home side, but urged Cricket Australia to make the appointment official sooner rather than later.
“I think in contemporary cricket the players are probably used to it,” he explained.
“In the not too distant past they’ve already had to deal with it, when Steve Smith lost the captaincy mid-series in South Africa. They’ve got a couple of weeks to get used to it, so that’s helpful, it’s not happening the day before the series starts.
“I think Pat should be announced straight away, rather than going through a process, to give him as many days as possible to get used to it, to sit down and discuss how it’s going to work.”
Although Aaron Finch retains the captaincy of the white-ball team, at the age of 35 he’s clearly nearing the end of his tenure.
Selectors will then be faced with the choice of making Cummins the captain in all formats of the game, or following the lead of England, where Eoin Morgan is the short-form captain, even though Test skipper Joe Root plays in the 50-over side.
According to Lawson, appointing a different white-ball skipper should be considered when the time comes.
“That would certainly make his job easier, but I don’t think they need to get too far ahead of themselves,” he explained.
“They’ve got five Tests coming up, and that’s the most important thing for Australian cricket right now.
“The first Test is even more important, we need to pick the right team, pick the captain and let the captain do his job. If Australia wins in Brisbane, it makes the whole summer a lot easier.
“Don’t look too far ahead, obviously they should be thinking about who might be the white-ball captain, but appoint the captain for the Test series and take it from there.
“England have Eoin Morgan captaining white-ball and Joe Root captaining red-ball, so certainly it’s nothing new.”
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