Shake on it, gents: Captain Tim Paine makes his mark

New captain Tim Paine does not want to be the sort of dominant figure that makes the Australian team in his own image, but he did begin the process of much-needed change in their approach to the game on the first day of the fourth Test against South Africa at the Wanderers on Friday.

The teams lining up for the national anthems is standard for Test cricket these days, but there was surprise, and approval, when the two teams all shook hands afterwards, something that has not been seen before, certainly not in a Test on these shores.

It was done at the behest of Paine, who wanted his first Test as official captain of Australia to be marked by a clear separation from the ugliness that has gone before.

“I’d been watching the soccer on TV and I noticed they do that before every game and I thought with cricket being the gentleman’s game, maybe we should as well. So I spoke to the umpires, and I spoke to Faf du Plessis – he was happy to do it – and we all just thought it’s not a bad way to start the match.

“There is a bit of drawing a line underneath everything that has happened because a bit of water has flown under the bridge and tension between the two sides. So we still want to be super-competitive, but we want to respect the opposition as well as we slowly try and build that respect back for our team,” Paine said after his new-look team had toiled manfully on the first day of the fourth Test, restricting South Africa to 313 for six.

Although the 33-year-old, who six months ago was considering giving up the game, does not want to speculate on how long he will be Australian captain, he was pleased to get their rehabilitation underway at the Wanderers on Friday.

“I still feel like the captaincy is a one-week job and I’m not looking too far ahead. There’s a long journey ahead, but we’ve made a start. I still think we were really competitive today without much verbals, it still felt like a Test match. That’s not the way we’re going to play now, we have a different style.

“We tended to push the boundaries more before, which people did not like, and I think this new approach suits this group of players better, not so many of them like to verbalise a lot. We want to create an environment where the guys can just be themselves. There’s a dark cloud over Australian cricket at the moment, but we’re going to try and find the silver lining,” Paine said.

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