Steve Smith or Travis Head? Australia set to name this player as captain for Champions Trophy: Report – India TV

Cricket Australia are set to name Steve Smith as their captain for the upcoming Champions Trophy 2025, slated to begin on February 19. Regular captain Pat Cummins is ruled out of the marquee event, owing to an ankle injury, which opened the room for discussion for Australia’s captain for the Champions Trophy. Mitchell Marsh, the leader of the T20I side was expected to take over as he did during the England series but the all-rounder too suffered an injury and is out of the competition.

The discussion was narrowed down to Smith and Travis Head. The prior did a fantastic job as a captain in the recently concluded Test series as captain and it helped the veteran get the green signal to lead the team in Pakistan. He has served as a leader of the national team in 59 ODIs and won 31 of them. He scored 2132 runs at an average of 44.41 in the format as captain and will be key for the side in the Champions Trophy.

Meanwhile, Josh Hazlewood and Cameron Green are also out of the tournament owing to their respective injuries. Interestingly, Marcus Stoinis, who was named in the 15-member squad, announced retirement from the format, which raised lot of speculations. Among pacers, Mitchell Starc and Nathan Ellis are the only frontline pacers that are available from the preliminary squad. 

In the meantime, Smith is also not 100% fit at the moment. The 35-year-old suffered an elbow injury in the Big Bash League earlier in the year and continued playing despite the concerns. Speaking on that, the cricketer mentioned that he feels a lot better and believes that the injury won’t bother him in the Champions Trophy.

“It feels fine. My throwing’s probably going to be limited for a little bit. It feels a lot better than it did when I injured it initially during that Big Bash game. It won’t affect my batting,” Smith was quoted as saying by Western Australian.