Dec 16: Australia can be confident about seeing the national cricket team in Steven Smith's hands. It is a great shame that Michael Clarke's body has not held up well this summer, and ideally it would have been nice to see Steven have another 12 months or so before taking on the job. But as the next long-term captain in the selectors' eyes, these next three Tests against India will do him a world of good.
I could understand Michael's strong desire to push through his back trouble and make a hundred in Adelaide, and I felt for him as he spoke fearfully about whether he might play again. We don't yet know how long he will be out for, but I do know that if the experts can get his body right, he may end up benefiting from time away, much as Mitchell Johnson and Brad Haddin have done in recent times. For now, though, the captaincy rests with Steven, completing a journey to leadership that began when I handed him his baggy green cap at Lord's against Pakistan five years ago.
Steven then made 77 in his second Test match, at Headingley. We had been bowled out for 88 on the first day and were well behind in the game. Pakistan eventually scrambled home in the fourth innings, but Steven's knock gave us a chance. Batting with the tail, he played all the shots, taking on Danish Kaneria in particular with a pair of sixes down the ground. We were sitting there in the team viewing area hoping he would go on to a hundred, and while Steven fell short, I never forgot how much poise he showed that day.
I think we all thought he was eventually going to be a batsman, but the view from the selectors when they first picked Steven was that he could be the next really bright, shining light as far as spin bowling was concerned. A bit like Cameron White when he came in for his first few games as a teenager bowling legspin. Everyone hopes they're going to turn into the next Shane Warne, and it very rarely turns out that way. Legspinners probably don't reach their peak until their late 20s, and we saw Steven in Shield cricket at 18, and White at 17.
Leggie or not, you could just see there was something unique about his batting. Like Phillip Hughes, Steven had the ability to score a lot of runs but did so in an unorthodox manner. They both looked a little different, Phillip being very strong on the off side and Steven, if anything, a little stronger as a leg-side player. When we first saw him we hoped he could potentially turn into a very good allrounder.
Since then, Steven has been treading a very similar path to David Warner. When I saw them both as young blokes, I knew that they had a lot of talent, because they could do the things that senior Test players deemed as difficult. They had all the shots, Warner could hit big sixes and Steven could play some unorthodox shots and make the hard things look easy. But when you looked at their techniques and how they were going to survive in the longer forms of the game, you had some question marks over how they were going to fare.
They both needed that technical base most players of my generation had, because we grew up playing longer-form cricket. They grew up playing short-form cricket, so had a game based more on those formats than we had. Both Steven and Warner have been able to build defensive games and plans that now allow them to bat for long periods of time and therefore score good Test match runs. With a little more comfort around their positions and 20 to 30 Test matches under their belt, they are getting to the point where they understand themselves and their own games and understand what it takes to be very good Test match players.
Something else I have liked about Steven's batting is how he has taken on responsibility for winning games in recent times. He has shown that particularly in the past two ODI series. When he got a chance to bat at No. 3 against Pakistan he made a fine hundred, and then against South Africa he was the man who got Australia over the line when they had looked down and out. He has got all the qualities to be a long-term leader and he's already developing a reputation as the man who can rescue Australia when all seems lost.
I learned a good deal about the way Steven thinks about the game by commentating on the BBL last summer. I watched him lead Sydney Sixers as I sat alongside Adam Gilchrist, Mark Waugh and Damien Fleming in the commentary box. We would talk about what the captain or bowlers might be thinking an over or two ahead. More than once, we mentioned a possible tactical move, and sure enough, Steven addressed it even as we spoke.
T20 provides a useful test of a young captain, because it is easy to get lost in the speed of the game and become overly reactive rather than staying ahead of it. Steven was very proactive in his thinking, and to see him do that gave me a lot of confidence about his leadership.
Brad Haddin has already served as Steven's deputy in the BBL, and will be an ideal vice-captain in Brisbane. The way he led the team in the final session of the Adelaide Test after Clarke's hamstring injury gave us a glimpse of how sharp Brad can be, both in terms of setting the right fields but also ensuring that the players stuck to their task at a time when India looked more than capable of winning the match. You could see from a distance that if Australia broke the stand between Virat Kohli and M Vijay it was always going to be difficult for new batsmen to start, and Brad should take a lot of credit for the way the team hung in.
He's a very determined, fighting character, and as the wicketkeeper, gets an excellent overview of the game. Brad's strong relationship with Steven will also come in handy, because as I discovered, leading Australia in a Test match is far more consuming than doing so for any other team or in any other format. This is less to do with the intensity of the match but more the amount of other tasks you find yourself saddled with in the days leading into the match. There are press conferences, numerous pitch inspections, interactions with players, discussions with selectors, and more -all the things that Steven would never have had to worry about before. Brad will be helpful there.
The way Australia have played over the past 18 months won't change much under Steven, because he doesn't know any other way. The time he has been back in the team is the time that Michael and Darren Lehmann have generated a shift towards greater acceptance of the way the team needs to play.
It was summed up best by the way Warner attacked the game on the first morning in Adelaide, not allowing India to settle. This was something special, because it took the pressure off the whole dressing room. He may only have been doing it to free his own mind and get himself back into another contest, but I have no doubt that had a big positive effect on everybody who batted after him.
It helped him that Mohammed Shami and Varun Aaron both started by bowling round the wicket. It was almost as though India were thinking about containing Warner, rather than trying to take the early wickets that are so critical in Adelaide, given how the pitch settles down on days one and two. You've got to try to make inroads with the new ball, and it doesn't matter how good the batsman is, your first thoughts must be about how you are trying to get him out.
There was never much doubt that was how Nathan Lyon was thinking on the last day, and what he did in the second innings, bowling Australia to victory, will be great for him. A lot of people seem to forget how good Nathan's record is. Every series there seem to be questions about why he is being persevered with, but his record is already outstanding for an Australian spinner, and he is getting better all the time.
India's batsmen have seen more spin than anyone in the world, and Nathan was able to bowl deliveries that baffled even their best. Balls that drift away and spin back with bounce are of the kind that Indian spinners have unleashed upon Australia, so to see one of our spinners doing that was terrific - it couldn't happen to a nicer bloke.
One of cricket's modern greats, Ricky Ponting captained Australia in 324 matches and scored over 27,000 runs
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