Following Aaron Finch's retirement, Australia's Test captain and star paceman Pat Cummins has been given the responsibility of guiding the One-day International (ODI) team as well.
The 29-year-old Cummins, who led Australia to a 4-0 Ashes victory earlier this year, has received the support of Cricket Australia (CA) to lead the nation in its 27th ODI.
"We are very fortunate to have a number of high-quality leaders and senior players across all formats," said Ben Oliver, EGM of High Performance and National Teams for CA. "The (CA) Board and selectors agree Pat (Cummins) is the ideal choice to lead the ODI team through the next period, including the 2023 World Cup (in India)."
"Pat has done a wonderful job since taking up the captaincy of the Test side," said George Bailey, chairman of the CA's selectors, "and we look forward to his guiding the one-day team to the 2023 World Cup in India."
They are big shoes to fill, but we are incredibly fortunate to have a one-day squad with a tonne of experience, said Cummins, who also led the Test team to a 1-0 victory on the historic Pakistan tour after the Ashes victory. "I have thoroughly enjoyed playing under Finchy (Aaron Finch) and have learned an enormous amount from his leadership," Cummins said.
According to the article, Cummins will become the first fast bowler to captain a men's squad in white-ball cricket and the first bowler since late spin legend Shane Warne filled in for 11 ODIs in the late 1990s.
Although no vice-captain has been appointed, Cummins said he would want one to take the helm in some of the series given that playing in all three formats would probably be detrimental to his physical and mental health.
With so much cricket going on, "you'd certainly need to look at it a little bit differently than perhaps in the past," Cummins had observed on Sunday, the day before he was named ODI skipper.
In a year like this, T20 becomes the focus leading up to a World Cup; next year might be different with the one-day World Cup; but with 15 Test matches in the next six months, I don't think you can expect the captain to play every game just because he is the captain, Cummins had said on Sunday. "Just playing every single game isn't realistic. We've got a handful of guys that play all three formats.