Dropping a clanger
Captain was meant to be a safe pair of hands
Australia have had only 46 Test captains in 144 years. It is therefore a grave and destabilising moment as the last of them, Tim Paine, resigns.
It is ironic, too. Paine was always seen as the safe pair of hands in every sense. Not only a sound wicketkeeper and batsman, but composed and sensible, and therefore the right man to take over from Steve Smith, when he, too, resigned tearfully, after “Sandpapergate”.
Paine, strange as it may now sound, made his Test debut for Australia at Lord’s in a Test against Pakistan in 2010. In that two-test series in England, he looked to be all ready to take over from Brad Haddin as wicketkeeper, so polished was he, until he suffered a very complicated hand fracture while batting in a charity game later that year.
His right index finger needed several operations and Paine has never been free of pain since. He was on the point of retiring when Australia’s selectors brought him back for the 2017-8 Ashes, which Australia won 4-0.
Of his rivals, Matthew Wade had a tendency to drop the ball, Peter Nevill not to score runs.
When David Warner and Smith were found guilty of changing the condition of the ball during the Australian tour of South Africa in 2018, and all hell broke loose, Paine was appointed Test captain. He was the only senior player left. He seemed a decent guy.
He made a few faux pas on the field and off. His decision to review an lbw decision, when the ball might not have hit another set of stumps, cost Australia the Headingley Test of 2019. The stump mic caught his comments during their home series against India which showed that Australia had not cleared up their image as much as they wanted outsiders to believe. As he is nearly 37, and this incident will
attract all sorts of flak from the England players, not to mention from some of the Australian public, Paine could be replaced as keeper by Wade, a better batsman but lesser keeper, or Alex Carey, who has yet to make his Test debut.
But an enormous weight would fall on Pat Cummins, his vicecaptain. Bob Willis, towards the end of his career, managed to captain England as a fast bowler and No 11, but Cummins’s job would be immensely onerous if he was not only Australia’s leading fast bowler, but captain, as well as batting at No 8.
England can only be privately pleased by this latest development.