While first appointed captain immediately after Steve Smith’s forced resignation as leader amidst the Newlands ball tampering scandal in late March of 2018, Paine described himself as putting his name “back into the pool” for this process, similarly to a political leader declaring the leadership vacant ahead of a party room vote.
Former Australian captain Tim Paine.Credit:Getty
After being re-nominated as captain, Paine denied it had been a box-ticking exercise, and affirmed his willingness to stand aside if his fellow players or the expert panel had decided he was not the right candidate.
“It probably wouldn’t have been my call. We took it very seriously and the players had their say, then there was a [interview] process after that as well,” Paine said in September 2018. “It was not done to tick boxes or anything like that. It was to make sure we had the right people leading this team going forward.”
The nomination of a wider group of leaders – Cummins was not included as he was recovering from a back injury at the time – was aimed at adding to the leadership options available to the national selectors in all formats.
Mitchell Marsh and Josh Hazlewood were named as joint vice-captains to Paine, while Aaron Finch, Alex Carey and Travis Head were also high in the voting and served as titled leaders at various points of the following summer.
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“We believe the new leadership model will best support the captain,” Hohns said at the time. “It is a successful model used across various sporting codes around the world, and we see it benefiting the group, not just from a tactical perspective, but also to help drive the team’s values and standards on and off the field.”
Given how publication of his explicit image and messages to the former staffer carried the potential to render Paine’s captaincy untenable at virtually any time after that point, the deeper pool of leadership options was not only preferable but essential.
The current process may involve as few as two players, but the questioning will be deeper.
“We’ve put in place a process for finding the next Australian captain that was going to take place over the summer in anticipation Tim would one day retire,” Freudenstein said on Saturday.
“We’re obviously accelerating that process. It’ll be a very thorough but brief process that will look at all the relevant criteria for a captain of the Australian cricket team. We will come to a conclusion with plenty of time before the Ashes.”
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Special CA committee to question captaincy hopefuls before deciding on next Test skipper
Source: Philippines Alive
