3 possible replacements for Steve Smith as a Test captain

The last four-five days have been days to forget if you are an Australian cricketer or a fan as their team is in deep crisis after what transpired in the third Test against South Africa in Cape Town where batsman Cameron Bancroft was caught tampering the ball with sandpaper so that his bowlers will get reverse swing.

Cricket Australia confirmed that no one apart from these three were involved in this incident and all the three players have been slapped with severe punishments. Skipper Steve Smith and his deputy, David Warner, are banned from playing any form of official cricket for the next 12 months while Cameron Bancroft has been handed a nine-month ban.

Adding to this, both Smith and Warner have also been disallowed from captaining Australia for the next two years. Now that Smith has been stripped off the captaincy, let us take a look at three players who can lead the Aussies in Tests over the next two years.

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Shaun Marsh

Batsman Shaun Marsh has been a revelation for the Aussies ever since he made a comeback to the national Test team for the 2017 Ashes as he is one of the unsung heroes of Aussies' Ashes triumph.

In the six innings he played in the ongoing tour, he got off to good starts on four occasions but failed to convert his starts into big match-winning knocks.

Fondly called as Son Of Swampy, Shaun Marsh is an experienced campaigner as he has represented his country in 31 Tests, scoring 2045 runs at an average of close to 40. He also has prior captaincy experience as he has captained his domestic side Western Australia in the past.

Mitchell Marsh

Ever since winning the 2010 Under-19 World Cup, the younger Marsh brother, Mitchell Marsh, has been always touted as the future captain of Australia. If Cricket Australia are looking for the right time to appoint Mitch as the skipper, then they won't get a better chance than this.

Mitch, who missed a majority of 2017 due to an injury, returned to action in November, led Western Australia to glory in the JLT Cup and was given a shocking recall to the Australian Test side for the third Ashes Test. He silenced his critics by scoring 181 in the third Test and went on to score yet another ton in the fifth Test in Sydney. He is also one of the very few Australian batsmen who looked at ease during the ongoing tour in South Africa.

Now that he has sealed his place in the Test side, and keeping the future of Australian cricket in mind, this is the right time for him to take over the captaincy.

Tim Paine

Barely six months ago, Tim Paine was nowhere close to the Australian team. In fact, he was not even a part of the Tasmanian team for Sheffield Shield. But, the Australian selectors took a gamble by picking him as the wicketkeeper for the Ashes and the 33-year-old repaid the faith the selectors had in him by performing consistently with the bat and with the gloves.

When the ball tampering incident took place in the third Test, Paine was named the Australian captain for day 4 after Steve Smith stepped down from captaincy for the remainder of the match. Adding to that, he was named the captain of the Australian team for the fourth Test in Johannesburg.

Paine can easily play for two more years and in all likelihood, he will be given the captaincy till the time Smith is banned and will hand over the reigns to the New South Welshman when his two-year captaincy ban is over.