Former Australian Captain, Steve Waugh piled on praise for Steve Smith’s leadership but believes that he may get exhausted because of the captaincy burden in all the three formats of Cricket.
“I don’t think he’s made too many mistakes since he’s taken over the captaincy,” Waugh told the Cricket Australia’s official website (cricket.com.au) on Thursday. “It’s been a huge learning curve but he also has the challenge of captaining three different forms of the game, which very few captains do these days.
“The only question mark is mentally how much the last six months has taken out of him,” he added. “I think (the demands can) become mentally draining because of the challenges associated with (captaining three national teams) where you have three different groups of players coming in-and-out of the teams. So, you need good people around you, you need good support from the coaches and from senior players. However, from what I’ve seen Steve seems to be handling the pressures very well.”
Steve Waugh, who has played 168 Tests and 325 One-Day Internationals for Australia for nearly two decades just missed the buzz of T20 era. He thinks Smith was burdened by captaining three formats and would require a break to ensure he does not get overworked.
“I didn’t have to worry about three formats, I had the two and the captaincy was taken away from me for the one-day stuff for the last couple of years,” Waugh said. “It’s all-encompassing and there’s a lot expected of you; you have to do things like front the media, and I think I did more media than the captains who came after me … they tend to share the workload (among the players) with the press and that’s a good thing.
“For me it was getting away up the coast to our holiday place and doing some fishing for a couple of days and getting away from the phone and the technology,” Waugh added. “That’s the hardest thing these days, you need an escape where you can fish, read a book, watch a movie to get away from cricket and recharge the batteries.”