Australia selectors strike gold again with Smith as captain

New pick for captain 'looks less a daring, blind risk and more a well-thought out, if inscrutable, bit of long-term planning', writes Osman Samiuddin

Australia batsman Steve Smith, right, prepares to hit a reverse sweep as India wicketkeeper MS Dhoni watches on during the second day of the third Test at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on December 27, Show more

One Test and four days into Steven Smith’s captaincy, it seems the Australians have done it again and somehow have appointed the right man for the job.

Michael Clarke may return to lead Australia, or he may never play for them again. But already, the decision to replace him with Smith looks less a daring, blind risk and more a well-thought out, if inscrutable, bit of long-term planning.

Smith is Australia’s third-youngest captain in their history, and his baby face makes him look too young to lead a school Under 15 side.

He is also the first Australian captain to hit two hundreds in his first two Tests, which – and more significantly – have been captain’s innings.

So much so that a few more and we will forget there was ever a period in his career when nobody knew what he was.

It is eerie that Australia keep doing it. Unnatural almost, particularly if you scan even casually around the cricket world and its captains.

England’s stubbornness in sticking with Alastair Cook as an ODI captain has ended, and no one can say at present with conviction that it might not soon be repeated at Test level.

Nothing needs to be said about the Pakistani and West Indian experience of finding captains, other than to look at their recent history.

India are coming to a moment with MS Dhoni and Virat Kohli, and it is up to them to recognise the trickiness of it.

Sri Lanka have found one, but they have had false dawns and dealing with that board makes captaincy impermanent.

Even New Zealand are only now, after trial and error, realising that Brendon McCullum may have been preternaturally equipped for leadership.

Australia, though, do get lucky now and again, as they have to because it is impossible to know for certain that a man can lead until he does.

One of their finest, Richie Benaud, was their third-choice option at the time he became captain.

Generally, they keep it uncomplicated. Pick the best XI and then identify the best man within that side. As a rule, they prefer batsmen.

You would have to go back half a century, when Benaud was captain, for the last time Australia had anything other than a specialist batting captain. There were not many before him.

They take risks, as well, even if they are often identified by their unwillingness to take the one risk most people remember: not picking Shane Warne as captain ahead of Steve Waugh.

Smith did not have too much long-form leadership experience before he was chosen, though he had led New South Wales impressively as they won last season’s Sheffield Shield.

Ian Chappell, one of their most influential captains, had led in just 10 first-class matches when chosen.

Kim Hughes had no first-class captaincy experience when he was chosen, and though he may be considered to have failed, the environment around him at the time hardly set him up for ­success.

All told, though, it seems to just be ingrained in the system to identify potential leaders. Once they know their man, they know him.

Allan Border had led Queensland for only one season when he became, reluctantly, the national side’s vice-captain.

He did not want the top job, either. Yet when Hughes resigned, not only was Border the only man, the board knew he was the right one and they made sure he got it.

In the early, most prodigious days of Mark Taylor’s career, when Border was still embedded and Taylor was scoring runs like Bradman, Greg Chappell had already sensed something.

“I see a special quality in Mark Taylor,” he said. “Richie Benaud, Sir Donald Bradman and Ian Chappell all had a hard, calculating edge to their character, and it’s obvious from the way Taylor bats that he has the steely heart necessary in a successful Australian captain.”

So it should have been no surprise to learn that Smith had also been identified, as the Australian writer Daniel Brettig revealed, as long ago as May 2013.

At that stage, to almost everyone else, Smith was still the latest in a line of failed Warne heirs, one who might turn into a useful new age, limited-overs hitter.

Australian cricket knew otherwise, and even now it baffles the ordinary mind.

Maybe we get carried away. Maybe it is as simple as identifying an individual and then sticking with him.

Two things happen generally once a captain is backed. He is either the right man, or he is given enough time to become the right man.

After all, it often has been easier to remove dictators than for an Australian captaincy stint to be cut short before time.

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