The ICC are holding their annual meeting of all the Test captains at Lord’s on Monday. Eight of the ten Test captains will be there. The West Indies will be unrepresented, with Carl Hooper apparently unavailable.
More interesting is the fact that the Australian Test captain won’t be there. Steve Waugh isn’t making the trip, and so Australia will be represented at the meeting by none other than Darren Lehmann!
Lehmann is already in England as captain of Yorkshire, who don’t have a game on Monday. Nonetheless, Boof is not only not a front-runner to become Australian captain at any time in the future, he hasn’t even been a member of the Test side in more than three years.
The fact that Waugh would have to fly half-way around the world for the meeting hasn’t stopped Stephen Fleming, Stuart Carlisle or Waqar Younis. Nor has it stopped Khaled Mashud, who has left Bangladesh’s touring party in Sri Lanka to be at the meeting. Indeed, both he and Sanath Jayasuriya have to be back in Colombo before Saturday for the First Test. (Shaun Pollock is already in England, playing for Warwickshire. Sourav Ganguly and Nasser Hussain make up the remainder of the captains on the attendance list.)
And then there’s the incumbent Australian vice-captain, Adam Gilchrist, who was in London last week for the FICA International Cricketer of the Year awards dinner – an award which he eventually won. Let’s not forget, too, that Shane Warne, who in my opinion <i>should</i> be the post-Waugh Australian captain on the basis of ability – is currently in England on a book tour.
There’s probably no reason why Ricky Ponting, as the current Australian ODI captain, would be ineligible to attend the ICC meeting either. But I’m afraid that I haven’t seen a decent explanation of Steve Waugh’s non-attendance.