Right from his baby days in international cricket, Patrick Cummins is well known for his astute cricketing brains. Now his astute brain has been vindicated by Cricket Australia as he is set to make his debut as the Aussie captain in a game dominated by batsmen.
Ashes to begin on 8th December:
On 8th December 2021, Australia and England will reinvigorate more than 143-year-old Ashes rivalry between them with the commencement of the first of five Ashes test matches of the season. The series will be earmarked as historic for one more reason as it will be one of the rare series in which a Test team will be led by an out-and-out Pacer.
Pat Cummins to lead The Aussies:
Pat Cummins has been promoted as a Test captain for the struggling Australian side looking to save its honour against England, its former colonial bosses. He will be the 47th test player to lead the side. After Ray Lindwall, who led the side for one much as a stand-in captain in 1956, Pat will be the first fast bowler to captain his country. Announcing his appointment, Nick Hockley, chief executive of Cricket Australia said, “Pat is an outstanding player and leader, He has earned enormous respect from his teammates and from all corners of the game for his attitude and achievements, both on and off the field.`”
Cummins will be leading the side when its regular captain and wicketkeeper Tim Paine has been hit by a sexting scandal due to which he had to resign from his post. Though, not an outstanding player, Paine is credited with bringing Australia back from the slumber of ball-tampering Scandal which had almost engulfed the career of current opener David Warner and Cummins’ deputy Steven Smith.
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Bowlers had an unfortunate burden of being extra attentive towards physical fitness:
More than 140 years of formally documented cricket history do not boast of a bowling captain. Right from the start, bowling is considered to be a physically demanding job than batting. It takes a lot of effort for a bowler to stay in shape and strengthen his upper and lower body so that they could perform as a unit in synchronization. Even a spinner who bowls more than 30 overs per day in a Test match has to toil more than an average batsman to keep his soldiers away from soaring due to his workload.
The workload gets doubled when it comes to fast bowlers. On average, a fast bowler’s knee takes a pressure of 16 times his body weight to be able to deliver a 156gm red cherry (cricket ball) with a speed of over 140 km/hr. Simply put, a fast bowler weighing 65kg will need a knee that could tolerate the weight of more than 1000 kg of load above him.
Due to huge fitness load, bowlers were left to follow their captains’ order:
With so much rigour on their side, a convention took shape in cricket, according to which a bowler was generally relieved from any kind of mental load whatsoever and he was required to follow orders from his skippers. Batsmen who obviously had the least physical load from the time being were handled responsible mental efforts like captaincy.
History suggests that the conventionalists were not so wrong in their empirical analysis. Though the available sample size to measure the success of bowling captains is very small, the not-so-good record of bowling captains like Daniel Vettori, Anil Kumble ended up giving fuel to the fire to the theory of ‘bowlers become poor captains’.
Even if the likes of bowlers like Shaun Pollock, Wasim Akram were able to perform well as a captain, the prejudice against the bowlers was so harsh that they were removed from their jobs at the slightest possible hint of miscalculation.
Only two genuine bowlers led their teams in World Cups:
Other than legendary Bob Willis captaining England in 1983 and Waqar Younis captaining Pakistan in the 2003 world cup, all other bowlers captaining their teams in the world cup have mainly played as all-rounders. They include India’s Kapil Dev, Pakistan’s Wasim Akram (though he was a bowling all-rounder) and Imran Khan, Zimbabwe’s Heath Streak, West Indian Darren Sammy and Jason Holder and South Africa’s Shaun Pollock.
The last known bowler to lead a side in international cricket was Daniel Vettori. Before him, India’s very own Anil Kumble was a prominent name in the bowler cum captain circle, but his appointment was mainly believed to be a temporary appointment to groom MS Dhoni’s captaincy skills under him.
As the times are changing, batsman’s game has become more athletic in nature and is demanding more physical fitness from them as well. Similarly, technology has eased fast bowlers’ life when it comes to maintaining the workload. Times are changing and so do conventions. Cricket Australia has made a great head start and it’s time for Patto-the smiling assassin to vindicate their faith.