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Tim Paine's Sudden Captaincy

After Cameron Bancroft's ball tampering got caught on camera during their test series against South Africa, it was assured that the incident happened because of Australia's leadership group's negative influence. Later Cricket Australia have revealed that they have banned Steven Smith and David Warner for a year & banned Cameron Bancroft for 9 months. For this reason, 33 years old Australian wicket-keeper batsman Tim Paine was announced as the new captain for their next test match against South Africa. This is a huge pressure and also a big opportunity for Tim Paine to cement his name as a great captain. This is Mashhud Hasan from Frenzyweb360 and today I'm going to talk about Tim Paine's career and his sudden captaincy.

Tim Paine was born on 8th December, 1984 in Hobart, Tasmania. From the very beginning of his career, he had showed his ability behind the wicket. He has many ups and downs in his short career. He played for Tasmania at the Sheffield Shield and debuted for Australia in 2009 in place of Brad Haddin. He got injured at his index finger by getting hurt by Dirk Nannes' good-length delivery during Australia Cricketers' Associations All Stars T20 match in 2010. At the same time Brad Haddin got recovered from his elbow injury and was on the verge of returning to the national team. As expected in that certain moment, Tim Paine lost his spot from the team. We can divide his career in two different parts. One is the pre-2010 time, another one is post-2017 time. First, let's talk about the first part of his career.

Paine had his first ODI debut in 2009 at Edinburgh against Scotland. He didn't play any significant strikes but showed some of his batting skills by scoring 29* out of 38 balls. Then he played at the Natwest Trophy against England where his starting wasn't that great but he ended the series scoring 237 runs out of 7 innings with an average of 33.85 and a strike-rate of almost 73. He scored his maiden fifty in his 5th ODI match and scored 51 in just 62 balls. He didn't take much time to score his maiden ODI hundred which he scored in his 7th ODI match against England at the Nottingham. Have to admit that it was one of the best innings ever scored by an Aussie against England in their home-ground. That innings was something to get explained. Paine scored 111 runs in 148 balls with 14 fours and a six. That was the innings that showed how classy his batting was. He didn't play any unorthodox shots but played very sincerely and grammatically. Started his boundary account by playing two square-drives against Sidebottom's deliveries through the point. He got edged with the bat once against Bresnan's delivery but hopefully keeper wasn't able to capture the ball. He played some well-timed leg glances and flicks through the fine-leg. He smashed Maskarenhas' length bowl through the long-off and scored the only six of his innings. He also played some pulls and hooks over the square. He also played a reverse sweep against Graeme Swann's delivery. He had built 163 runs partnership with Mikel Hussey at 3rd wicket. In that innings he played with temperament and his shot selections were very calculative. Finally his innings was ended when he tried to play a hook against a slower and got caught-behind for not timing well with the shot correctly. That was the innings which proved his worth of being a part of Australian team. Later that year he scored 447 runs out of 15 matches with an average of 31.92 and made 1 century along with 3 fifties. He continued the same form in 2010 by scoring two fifties with an average of 30.88 in 9 matches but a strike-rate of 62.47 in that year was the reason of his failure at cementing his spot as a lower-middle order batsman. Not to mention he was pretty consistent at the longer version. He had his test debut at 2010 and also got cut from the team in same year for his finger injury. In that year, he scored 287 runs in 8 innings with a solid average of 35.87 and made 2 fifties. The place and the condition has made those fifties so special. He scored 92 against India at Mohali and 59 at Bangalore in the same series. While most of the non-asian batsmen struggles to score runs at such spinning tracks of India, Tim Paine was pretty much comfortable with that reverse condition. But these performances wasn't able to put him to squad due to his finger injury and Brad Haddin's return.

After 7 years lay off, Paine got called by Cricket Australia for the Ashes test series. Well, he wasn't able to prove with the bat in his first returning test but recalled his past prime at the Adelaide test where he scored 57 runs at the 1st innings. After his return, he has played 8 test matches and scored 338 runs in 12 innings with an average of whopping 48.28 but scored only one fifty. It wasn't surprising because he ends many of his innings being not out. He usually carries the innings with the lower orders with maturity and responsibility. Soon he had his ODI return and delivered his form in that format as well. He scored 117 runs out of 4 innings but his average was 58.5 and some of those innings had helped Australia to build a shape at the death overs of their innings.

So, we can see here that Tim Paine's unstoppable mentality has helped him bounce back with a better form. Now he's even better than he was 8 years ago. He always bats with good timing and shot selections and often tries to use his foot-works correctly. We have to remember his wicket-keeping ability as well. At the previous year's Ashes, he performed brilliant behind the wicket. He is very agile on his feet and has good mobility. He has a total of 53 catches and 3 stumping in test. In ODI, he has 41 catches and 4 stumping. Across all formats he has a total of 114 dismissals.

Many Australian legends including Adam Gilchrist have been impressed with Tim Paine's leadership and Tim Paine was also expecting to lead his nation one day. He got the captaincy after Steven Smith got banned for tampering the ball. But he never expected to get the captaincy by this way. However, he should look forward to lead his team from the front and also deliver top class performance with the bat. We are also looking forward to see how he does with this weakest Australian team in their history after he got a sudden captaincy.

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