The Australian Cricket Board should take the initiative now with the selectors and instruct them to offer Shane Warne the captaincy of the national side for the Ashes series.
Such an initiative would at a stroke solve two major problems currently facing the Test side. First, there is not one spinner in Australia who is much more than a good club bowler, if that. Second Ricky Ponting is a great batsman and an ordinary captain who cannot seem to guide his team authoritatively in tight situations.
The two favoured spinners currently, Nathan Hauritz and Jason Krezja, are off-spinners, a category that aside from Ashley Mallett and the eccentric Jack Iverson has not been generally successful for Australian teams over the decades. Moreover, Hauritz doesn’t spin the ball much and Krezja, who can turn the ball, leaks runs at the unacceptable rate of over 4 an over.
The second problem relates to the unimaginative, uninspiring and often baffling field captaincy of Ricky Ponting. His use of bowlers is often bizarre. In South Africa’s massive rebuilding of their first innings at Melbourne from being 7 for 184 followed by an eighth wicket partnership of 180, Ponting did not stop the flow of singles, used 7 -2 fields which are impossible to bowl to with taking wickets in mind, and did not bowl Simon Katich, relying on the gentle slow-mediums of Michael Hussey.
Shane Warne, even at age 37, is worth all these bowlers at their best, and much more.
The lack of pressure on the batsmen at the MCG, as it did when South Africa made their historic winning run chase at Perth, meant that singles were given away. This slack field-placing made it easy for the visitors to dig in and maintain a good run rate. J.P. Duminy (who I rate the nearest thing to Neil Harvey I’ve seen, an assessment endorsed by Bill Lawry) scored 30 singles in his first 100.
The tailenders, too, were not put under the pressure of having fieldsman surrounding them, encircling them, making them play aggressively and with risk to score their runs.
Shane Warne would not allow an innings to drift the way Ponting does when wickets do not fall regularly.
Asked by Mark Nicholls on the Channel 9 commentary what he’d be doing if he were the skipper, Warne immediately suggested more aggressive fields to the tail-end batsmen, with pressure applied with the occasional nasty Merv Hughes assault and generally different things tried to make the needed break-throughs.
The difference between Warne and Ponting as captains is that Ponting allows the game to drift if his bowlers are not on top whereas Warne tries to make things happen when they are not happening. This is captaincy in the great tradition of Australian captains like Richie Benaud and Ian Chappell, the best Test captains in my view since the Second World War.
Chappell, in fact, is a great admirer of Warne’s captaincy skills. It takes a great leader on the field to know and appreciate another great leader.
During that discussion, too, Nicholls remarked: ‘Shane Warne is in the wrong place.’ He meant by this that Warne should be on the field rather than in the commentary box.
Bill Lawry piped up: ‘Twenty20 is your go Shane.’
Interestingly, Warne did not seemingly agree with this. ‘I’m actually quite fit, running and training,’ he remarked. I took this to mean, hint, hint, that he was fit enough to play Test cricket.
It’s quite clear that Warne will not come back to Test cricket merely as a bowler. He’s been there, done that – magnificently.
But the captaincy of the Baggy Green Caps is another matter. In interviews he has told reporters that it is unlikely he would come back to Test cricket but ‘never say never,’ he quickly adds.
I have no doubt, though, that if he were offered the captaincy for the Ashes Series he would be in like Flynn, or is that in like Warne.
Are Cricket Australia and the selectors big enough in terms of cricket gumption to make Warne an offer he can’t and wouldn’t refuse?
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