“I don’t expect to see Pat play every one-day game”: George Bailey confirms shared Australia ODI captaincy after naming Pat Cummins as new ODI captain

George Bailey has confirmed that there will be a shared Australia ODI captaincy model after naming Pat Cummins as new ODI captain. 

After Aaron Finch’s ODI retirement, there was a lot of debate about the new ODI captain of the Australian side, and a lot of names were put into the contentions. However, the debate is finally over as Australia have named Pat Cummins as their new ODI captain. He will lead the side in the next year’s World Cup.

Ahead of the Ashes last season, Cummins was named the new test captain of the side as well after Tim Paine’s sexting scandal. Under the leadership of Cummins, Australia won the Ashes, whereas they also defeated Pakistan in away conditions. It is safe to say that the test captaincy stint of Cummins has been great so far.

It is interesting that earlier Cummins said that he favours David Warner to be the new ODI captain of the side as he can’t play lead in multiple formats being a fast bowler. There were a lot of talks about lifting Warner’s captaincy ban as well, but Cummins is now the official ODI captain of Australia.

George Bailey confirms shared Australia ODI captaincy

Australia’s selection chief George Bailey has said that Cummins was the best choice for the role, but the Australian team won’t rely on a single captain going into the next year’s World Cup in India. Bailey insists that they are moving towards the concept of collaborative captaincy going ahead.

Bailey confirmed that he does not expect Cummins to play in all the ODIs going forward, and he wants two or three other guys to chip in as captains when Cummins is unavailable to play.

“We are moving away from this concept of a captain taking over and their leadership being all-encompassing,” George Bailey said as quoted by cricket.com.au.

“We’ve been really clear with not just with Pat but all our multi-format players that we will continue to manage them across all formats. We’re very clear on prioritising key series.”

“I don’t expect to see Pat play every one-day game in the lead-in to the World Cup, so I expect that we might see two or three guys take the leadership for a game at some stage.”

Cummins and Aaron Finch both backed Warner to be the new ODI captain, whereas Cricket Australia also confirmed that they were in talks to remove the captaincy ban of Warner. Warner is expected to be in the leadership group though along with other senior players.