Captaincy and leadership are the two most important facets of a cricket game.
It is, perhaps, the only global sport in the world where the captain has the most power tactically as well as the decision-making, rather than it just being like an armband handed on to the players in football.
Leadership also becomes quite an important factor in cricket across all three formats where the captain not only has to make sure he enhances his performance but also gets the best out of the other players.
Also, he needs to make sure he is proactive for the whole 20 overs in a T20 game, 50 overs for a 50-over game and for the whole five days for a Test match.
Well, that was just an overview of captaincy and leadership in this vast sport of cricket.
Pat Cummins has been doing these things for the past three years for Australia successfully and how he has brought this Aussie domination of ICC trophies back.
Something that was missing after the Ricky Ponting captaincy era.
So why change Cummins as a captain for this T20 World Cup? Was it because Cummins wasn’t a sure starter in the playing 11 like Mitch Marsh?
Let’s dive deep into this topic.
It is pretty easy to do a post-mortem of how things went bad for Australia this World Cup and point out a few players for not performing after they have been eliminated, but one needs to understand not all bad things are said after it’s done.
But these concerns regarding the squad were there pre-tournament as well, which did prove right after the elimination.
The first thing that I felt was wrong with the squad or the whole T20 set-up of Australia starts with the captain Mitch Marsh.
Mitch Marsh. (Photo by Matthew Lewis-ICC/ICC via Getty Images)
He’s been an outstanding batter for Australian cricket in T20s ever since his performances in 2021.
He first batted at three in the West Indies and Bangladesh tour scoring 219 and 156 runs in those series leading to an emphatic T20 World Cup win in 2021, scoring 185 runs with an average of 61.7 and striking at 146.8. Not to forget the match-winning 77 against the Kiwis in the final shattering their World Cup dreams.
But the real question is does he have it in him to lead this outrageous Australian team that’s winning ICC trophies for fun?
I feel Marsh as a leader was absent in big moments in this World Cup. Whenever you see Australia play you see a team wanting to win, throwing themselves on the field and performing and intimidating the rival teams – and the biggest inspiration for those things to happen is the leader present on the field.
Whether it was Steve Waugh, Ricky Ponting, Michael Clarke or even Cummins they rose to big occasions and led from the front in key moments.
Cummins did that when he silenced 132,000 Indian fans in November last year by taking Virat Kohli’s wicket and breaking the key partnership between Kohli and KL Rahul.
The 2003 World Cup final when Ricky Ponting announced himself as the next big captain in Australian cricket by demolishing India with a dominating 140* – or Steve Waugh’s performances against South Africa in the 1999 World Cup with a 120* in Super 6s and a vital 56 in the semifinal.
So all these performances suggest how Australian captains have shown their leadership by winning those key moments with their performances in big games. Unfortunately, Mitch Marsh couldn’t do so at this World Cup.
Australia statistically also where the “worst” fielding side. It’s a term you never associate with the Aussies.
They had a 70% catching efficiency before the India match, the worst among all teams.
The question you would ask is how do you associate other fielders dropping catches to a captain? The answer is that if a captain drops important catches himself not only does he show he is a bit under pressure but also not setting a good example on the field.
Pat Cummins leads the Australian side off. (Photo by Matthew Lewis-ICC/ICC via Getty Images)
Against India, Marsh dropped Pandya when he was on four at the backward point with the easiest of chances and the result is that Pandya scored 23 more runs at the end, Australia lost by 24 runs.
Oh, the “catches win you matches” quote always proves right. The fielding against Afghanistan was atrocious and lazy something again you don’t associate with the Aussies, and likewise against Scotland.
The other big blunder by Marsh and the team management was to drop your biggest match winner with the ball in ICC tournaments which was Mitchell Starc.
We all talk about combinations and needing an extra spinner on the Caribbean pitches but dropping Starc is not something you do in a big match.
Marsh could have been creative in using Glenn Maxwell or even Travis Head as options to cover the role of second spinner along with Adam Zampa.
Afghanistan batsmen generally do not play high pace with ease and they needed the opening partnership to be broken – and had Starc bowled his trademark inswinger and got Rahmanullah Gurbaz out, that would have been game, set and match for the Aussies.
Now to the main topic point of why Cummins wasn’t chosen as the captain. Cummins before the IPL this year had never captained a T20 side not even a domestic side but that doesn’t mean you leave out or doubt his credentials as a captain a man with two ICC trophies.
The IPL just showed how influential a leader he is with the way he changed the SRH team and took them to the final – a team that before this year was going absolutely nowhere as a franchise.
Marcus Stoinis starred with bat and ball in Australia’s T20 World Cup win over Oman. (Photo by Gareth Copley/Getty Images)
Cummins as a leader is someone who has taken bold and out of box decisions; go back to the semifinals of last year’s World Cup against South Africa where he let Travis Head bowl his offies against David Miller and Heinrich Klaasen – and didn’t bowl Adam Zampa who had gone to 40 in his five overs at that point of time.
The result of that decision? On the fourth ball of his first over, Head gets the wicket of Klassen at an important stage of the game and the next ball gets Marco Jansen LBW.
These out-of-the-box decisions make the captain a strategic leader as well.
Another reason why Cummins should have been the captain of the T20 side was because he not only has been part of this bunch of guys for the last eight years – he knows these players inside out, more than Marsh.
He knows how to get the best out of them whereas Marsh is this fun-loving guy who goes about his business and makes sure he performs well to make his team win and makes everyone laugh in the room.
So the environment of a captain and leader is very important in a dressing room something that Cummins had.
Marsh looked a bit undercooked as well, as a player and as a captain – and that is very important given Australia hadn’t played much under him.
He was appointed officially as a captain in 2023 August when Australia toured South Africa for three T20 Internationals and five ODI’s in September right before the World Cup as part of the team’s preparations.
The players from the Ashes series were rested, and after that T20 series the next assignment in that format was against India directly after the 50-over World Cup ended, and Mathew Wade was made the captain.
Australia could have given Marsh a go for at least three matches.
Mitchell Marsh drops a catch. (Photo by Matthew Lewis-ICC/ICC via Getty Images)
But that being said, he is experienced as a captain but perhaps not very experienced captaining an Australian team so Cummins would have been a natural option.
It is also important to note Marsh left the Perth Scorchers captaincy in 2021 handing it over to Aston Turner so there has been that phase as well, where he where he didn’t experience the captaincy.
Does Australia look for another captain in T20I’s?
Well, Australian cricket is not known to make drastic changes like that and there is no reason to make these big changes.
Marsh will be a more experienced and better-groomed captain until the 2026 WT20 happening in India and Sri Lanka so he gets almost two years to fit in that captaincy environment and fit in some new players as Australia go into a big white ball transition with many players being in their mid-30s.
If Marsh can handle his injuries better and also perform as a captain because he is a wonderful player when in form the T20 World Cup title isn’t far away from Australia an ICC tournament where uncharacteristically they have underperformed.
Final Verdict
The final verdict perhaps would be that Pat Cummins should have been made the captain for this T20 World Cup in West Indies and the USA.
The reason I say specifically for this World Cup is that there would have been a different type of self-confidence among this group with at least nine players of the first-string playing 11, excluding Mathew Wade and Tim David, having been part of the 2023 50-over World Cup win under Cummins.
Marsh would have also been better prepared mentally for the 2026 World T20 in India and Sri Lanka given he was also injured with a hamstring during the IPL.
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