Josh Hazlewood aspires to lead Australian Test side
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Josh Hazlewood expressed his desire to take up the captaincy of the Australian Test side, which finds itself in a limbo after Steve Smith's ban. He also added that this would be a great opportunity for him to bring out the best out of him as a player and help him understand the team responsibility.
With players like Ricky Ponting, Michael Clarke, Steve Waugh, Shane Watson, and Steve Smith as skippers, Australia has always been a well-balanced side that won many many major tournaments including several World Cups. However, the team finds itself in a very dark position ever since the ball tampering incident took place in 2018, which resulted in Steve Smith being banned from Australian cricket for a year and was replaced by Tim Paine. However, the Australian Test side has been looking forward to
“I would love to do it. It's a great opportunity to get one of the bowlers in there, get our point of view of what's happening out on the field and so on. It would be exciting to get the role. It brings the best out in players, as we saw with Smithy his batting went to another level when he became captain. We've got that senior group of four or five players there who've played a lot of cricket now. Nathan Lyon, Mitchell Starc, myself and Tim Paine. I think it'll be fine whoever gets the job. I guess I have been around the team for quite a while now, played 40 or so Test matches. It's quite a young group once you take those senior guys out. Being a bowler, it would be good to have one of us in the captaincy,” Hazlewood was quoted as saying by Cricbuzz.
With the absence of Australian stalwarts like Steve Smith and David Warner, there is a deep void in the team. Even though Tim Paine has been leading the side, the performance of the team as a whole has considerably gone down. However, another brilliant Aussie pacer Pat Cummins feels that Hazlewood looks pretty balanced to take up the captain’s post.
“Sometimes (fast bowlers are) pretty cooked (after bowling) and we just watch the game and start to get our heads around having to bat or recovering from bowling. But he's straight there watching, and he has some really good ideas about how to approach an innings. He's a really good thinker, but at the same
