Why we should all give Steven Smith a break

A captain should stand up and be responsible for his team, Matthew Hayden said on Saturday. Steven Smith, in Hayden’s mind, should not have returned home from the one-day series in Sri Lanka for a rest. The captain should call the shots, not the coach or selectors or high-performance staff. Hayden calls the whole thing “absolute horseshit”. Ex-players often get on their high horse, but if Hayden’s was any higher it would be a giraffe.

“Some of your best performances are always those that come when you have to bloody dig deep, and when you’re in subcontinent conditions, mate, you’re digging deep the entire time,” Hayden said on radio station Triple M. He went on to invoke the “fabric of the baggy green”. Well, that settles it, then. Just Aussie up the rhetoric, mate, mention the myth of the baggy green (even though the series in question is one-day cricket) and who can possibly argue?

But here’s the thing about Matthew Hayden: he never once captained Australia, in any format. And here’s the thing about Steven Smith: he is currently Australia’s captain in every format. And if Smith was to play all of Australia’s remaining matches for 2016, he would break the all-time record for captaining Australia in the most games in a calendar year. Not only that, he would do so in his first full year as skipper.

Smith has led Australia in 30 games this year across all formats, and there are 19 matches remaining. Imagine Smith played all of those games. Of all comers from all countries, only Sachin Tendulkar would have captained more internationals in a calendar year (51 in …

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