#360view: Exploring Test Cricket’s youngest captains

Hassan Cheema 19:35 26/12/2014
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  • Fresh-faced: At just 25 Steven Smith is the third youngest captain in Australian cricket history.

    Just over a decade on from Graeme Smith’s appointment as the captain of the South African team the circle is now complete. What was then seen as a wholly out of the box move has now become de rigeur for the decision makers.

    When even Australia – the land of Chappelle and Waugh, of gnarly experienced cricketers mentally disintegrating the opposition – start following the trend it becomes too hard to ignore.

    Australia’s appointment of the cherubic leg spinner turned batsman over Brad Haddin – another of those gnarly old men – is the latest domino to fall in the fight against youth. At just 25 Steven Smith is the third youngest captain in Australian cricket history.

    The only two men selected for the high office at an even earlier age came upon their post in far difficult circumstances – Ian Craig was made the captain as Australia went through a rare barren stretch, while Kim Hughes’ appointment was largely fuelled by the Packer exodus.

    Smith, on the other hand, has been made the captain of a team that was top of the Test rankings as recently as earlier this year.

    And yet his appointment has not raised as many eyebrows as it once would have. Smith joins the ranks of Angelo Matthews (appointed Test captain at 25), Virat Kohli (26, and the heir apparent whose appointment almost seems to have been delayed too long), and the recently appointed Windies ODI captain, Jason Holder in signaling the dawn of the age of the adolescents.

    Just in the past six years we’ve also seen the likes of Kane Williamson, Dinesh Chandimal, Salman Butt, Mushfiqur Rahim, Shakib Al Hasan, Dwayne Bravo and Alastair Cook lead their teams out well before their 26th birthdays.

    It wasn’t always thus, of course. For instance in the 2003 World Cup, 11 of the 12 captains had experienced their 28th birthdays – the only exception being Bangladesh’s Khaled Mashud; a decade or so earlier, in the 1992 World Cup, 8 of the 9 captains were 29 or older. It seems that we live in the age of the young captain.

    There are several reasons for this trend, perhaps foremost among them being the longevity of the currently outgoing generation.

    The rise of T20 cricket, the introduction of silly money and the increase in professionalism that these have brought has resulted in a generation that has extended its stay further than many that came before it.

    Their legacies – often inflated by the runfests of the noughties – has meant that the generation immediately following them has not made the mark as they ought to have done.

    India and Australia have already had to deal with the vacuum their giants have left, and it is something that both Pakistan and Sri Lanka will have to deal with soon enough.

    Dwayne Bravo was made Test captain of the West Indies before his 26th birthday.

    With the exception of England, South Africa and New Zealand nearly every team has had to jump a generation from those that have dominated this century – and its not a surprise that it’s the former two who have dominated Test cricket in this decade, even if they have had to see some of their great batsmen leave earlier than their dates of birth would have suggested.

    Even some of the better players in their supposed prime (around 30 years of age) right now can be considered young, at least in cricketing terms.

    The likes of Murli Vijay, Azhar Ali and Faf du Plessis may have a decade of domestic experience behind them but they are not the established superstars one expects in their age bracket.

    Another reason is that with the success and longevity that Graeme Smith showed – and considering all sports teams tend to copy whatever the best do – the template has been created for other teams; even if the conditions in which Smith was appointed were relatively unique.

    Another, and more obvious, reason for this trend is the illusion of hope, the same thing that Graeme Smith once offered. The idea that something drastically different from the status quo will solve all riddles.

    That is why cricket administrators, coaches and players continue to talk about teams “in transition” for years on end.

    The idea that a brighter future awaits, if only we wait a bit longer, is sold successfully to fans across borders and across sports. If Steven Smith doesn’t succeed immediately then patience will be called for – and granted –for he is too young for the fans to be expecting miracles.

    And if he does succeed then the illusion of hope only becomes brighter: “if he is this good right now, imagine what he will be once he has matured”.

    Young captains are allowed mistakes and lost series far more than their established counterparts.

    The yardstick on which Tillekeratne Dilshan was judged was different from that of Angelo Mathews, and now that Mathews is establishing himself as a successful captain along the line of Graeme Smith it will only embolden those who seek to make such decisions.

    And yet for every Mathews there is a Shoaib Malik or two: captains given too much too soon but immediately forgotten in the search for a better tomorrow.

    Fans will sacrifice a competent today for the possible chance of an unprecedented tomorrow. It seems that the promise of greatness is always better than the reality of competence.

    Meanwhile Pakistan continue to be the salmon of the cricket world. They of course went through a similar vacuum barely half a decade ago when the retirement of Inzamam together with what seemed the end of Mohammad Yousuf and Younis Khan meant that the best two options Pakistan had were Salman Butt – a man who had rarely seemed capable of greatness at the highest level – and Shahid Afridi, someone who hadn’t played a Test for four years.

    The country which spent the better part of a decade with bowlers as captains in the 90s and early 2000s, even if it was never caught on elsewhere, now looks away from youth. When Mohammad Hafeez left his post as the T20 captain, only in Pakistan could the replacement have been a man several years older, in the autumn of his career. To be fair to If this hasn’t gone up yet, it’s a good one.

    Pakistan they have tried everything that works elsewhere and realized that it doesn’t work here.

    Younis Khan was anointed the heir much like Ponting, Clarke or Cook were elsewhere, only for Pakistan to find out in 2007 that Younis was probably the only player in the country’s recent history not to have an insatiable lust for the captaincy.

    Pakistan went with youth with both Shoaib Malik and Salman Butt only to find out that neither of them had the morality to stay in that position.

    Thus Pakistan, the team that was renowned for fake birth dates and hordes of teenagers in tour squads, will be the only major team that goes into the World Cup with their captain the wrong side of forty. When the world yings, Pakistan yangs.

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