Australia captaincy contenders: Who is best placed to succeed Tim Paine?

As Tim Paine announced his shock resignation on Friday amid a sexting scandal, Australian cricket is hunting a new Test captain less than a month out from the start of the Ashes series.

Telegraph Sport runs the rule over the contenders to replace Paine in one of the toughest roles in the sport.

Pat Cummins

The current Test vice-captain is the early front runner to replace Paine, and there are several good reasons to think he will be the man leading out Australia in Brisbane.

Cummins, 28, is well established as the world’s finest fast bowler, and is guaranteed a start in Australia’s first-choice XI, not least because he is also able to chip in with useful runs down the order at No 8.

His character also seems well suited to a job which is often described as the second most important role in Australia behind the Prime Minister. He is not an archetypal Aussie snarler and is unlikely to be caught up in rows over sledging, despite being a ferocious competitor on the field.

When asked earlier this year if he harboured captaincy ambitions with his country, he replied: "Absolutely. At the moment I haven’t got too much experience at all, just a couple of warm-up games in England and other than that it’s Under-16s cricket when I last captained. So for sure it’s something that’s going to be more on the radar."

The drawback is that fast bowlers are rarely given captaincy roles, simply due to them rarely being available for every match - Australia have not had a bowler lead their side since Richie Benaud in the 1960s, and he was a spinner.

Australia had hoped to rotate their formidable battery of quick bowlers in the Ashes: that will be much harder if Cummins is captain.

Steve Smith

Devoid of context, Smith would be a no-brainer to replace Paine: he is the first name on the Australia team sheet, one of the game’s all-time greats who regularly terrorises England and is well liked in the dressing room.

The catch, of course, is his history. Smith, 32, held the captain’s role for three years before being forced to resign in disgrace for his role in the ‘Sandpaper-gate’ affair, when he, Cameron Bancroft and David Warner were found to have engaged in a conspiracy to doctor the ball in a Test match against South Africa in 2018.

Smith, whose tearful press conference after flying back to Sydney Airport became one of the defining images of the crisis, was banned for a year amid widespread condemnation of his behaviour that reached the very top of the Australian government.

Part of his punishment was that he was banned from captaining any side for two years so it would seem inconceivable that he could be deemed ready to take back the role so soon after one of the most traumatic episodes in Australian sporting history.

The man himself, however, has said he is ready to take on the role again if offered it.

"I’ve certainly had a lot of time to think about it and I guess now I’ve got to a point where if the opportunity did come up again I would be keen," Smith said recently.

"If it was what Cricket Australia wanted and it was what was best for the team at the time, it’s certainly something I would be interested in now, that’s for sure. I’m always going to have to live with Cape Town regardless of whether I lead again or not. It’s always there."

Marnus Labuschagne

Australia’s best batsman after Smith is also guaranteed to play every Test, after a turbo-charged start to his international career.

Although his debut came against Pakistan in 2018, Labuschagne only cemented his place in the side in 2019 after being used as a concussion substitute for Smith in the Lord’s Ashes Test of 2019, but his performance there - he scored a half-century - quickly established his credentials and he has been a fixture in the side ever since.

Labuschagne’s twitchy, fidgety style at the crease owes much to Smith and anyone who watched the Amazon documentary series The Test, which went behind the scenes with the Australian side, will have observed the debt he owes the former captain.

Nobody doubts either Labuschagne’s thoughtfulness for the game or his character, and he has experience of captaining age-group teams at his state side, Queensland.

Paine himself backed Labuschagne’s long-term credentials to succeed him as recently as June. "I think he'd be a good (leader)," Paine said. "Marnus is a great thinker of the game. He's a good team man, he's got so much enthusiasm for his team and the game.

"In terms of our cricket team improving and Marnus evolving, I think in the next couple of years we'll definitely see him take the step up.”"

Yet the job of leading Australia is an onerous one and there will be concerns that a 27-year-old just three years into his international career simply is not ready for the task, and that promoting him now would negatively affect his batting. And Australia desperately need the runs of Smith and Labuschagne to bulwark an otherwise underwhelming batting line-up.