Cricket Australia (CA) on October 17 (Tuesday) announced Pat Cummins as the national team's new ODI captain and the right-arm pacer will replace Aaron Finch, who retired from ODI cricket last month. The star Aussie pacer will become the 27th player to lead the Baggy Greens in the ODI format. Finch's unforeseen decision to retire from ODI cricket surprised cricket fans and it gave the country's cricket board a little headache. With Finch walking away, the captaincy post was vacated and Cricket Australia was tasked to make a tough and calculative decision.
Test skipper Cummins was always the front-runner to replace Finch while opening batter David Warner was also in the reckoning, especially as several former and current players have called for the southpaw's life ban to end. However, the Aussie cricket board decided to bestow the responsibility on Cummins.
After being appointed as the new ODI skipper of the national side, Cummins both lauded Finch's efforts and expressed his elation.
"It’s a great honour. I felt very privileged and lucky when the selectors approached me about this," Cummins told reporters on Tuesday in Brisbane.
"I want to publicly thank Aaron for all his efforts over the last few years, he’s been a fantastic leader for our squad and the team’s in a great place," he added.
Meanwhile, the chairman of selectors George Bailey said it was a 'no-brainer' to appoint Cummins as the new ODI skipper while he also underlined that as two or three players are in line to lead the national side in Cummins' absence.
"I think we’ve got a number of players within the group who can assume the leadership should they need to," Bailey said.
"I don’t expect Pat to play every One Day game in the lead up to the World Cup, I expect we could see two or three guys taking the leadership for a game at some stage," he added.
