On his 35th birthday, Adam Voges was uncapped in Test cricket and expected to stay that way. The last Australian batsman to debut at such an age – Ken Eastwood – did it so long ago that overs were still eight balls long. But on his 36th birthday, Voges will not only be in Bangladesh as part of Australia’s Test team, he will be just one Steven Smith injury or illness away from becoming Australia’s 46th Test captain.
It is a remarkable development for Voges, but then it has been a year of remarkable change for Australia. Of the squad that began the Ashes tour Michael Clarke, Brad Haddin, Shane Watson, Chris Rogers and Ryan Harris have retired, David Warner is injured, and Mitchell Johnson and Josh Hazlewood are being rested. When national selector Rod Marsh named the touring partyfor the Bangladesh series, he felt there was only one man who could be Smith’s vice-captain.
“If Steven Smith did get crook, it would have been very tough to have anyone else captain the side but Voges,” Marsh said at the time. “He’s had a lot of experience at captaincy, he’s got a cool head, and I think he’ll be an excellent vice-captain for Steven on his first tour of duty away from home as captain of the Australian Test team.”
And so it is that Voges becomes Smith’s key sounding board on his first tour as Australia’s full-time Test captain, standing in for the appointed vice-captain Warner, who broke his thumb during the recent ODIs in England. It caps off an extraordinary 2015 for Voges, who in May became the oldest man to score a century on Test debut, against West Indies in Kingston.