Pat Cummins has been named the 47th man to captain Australia's Test cricket team.
His selection might seem obvious: the current vice-captain who is a shoo-in for selection, when fit at least, who is almost universally liked and admired by fans and players.
However, picking a fast bowler as captain goes completely against the historical grain.
Incredibly, in 144 years of Test cricket, no fast bowler (excluding all rounders) has ever captained Australia's men's team on a full-time basis.
The only time a fast bowler has taken the captaincy reins was in 1956, when Ray Lindwall skippered for one Test against India.
So why is that?
The answer, in part at least, lies in cricket's hierarchical past.
Bowlers overlooked since Victorian era
Cricket, throughout its history, has been a tool through which the upper-middle class have maintained their social standing over the rest, be it across the Empire in Britain's varied colonies, or at home in class-divided pre-war England.
This divide was obvious in places like the West Indies.
CLR James wrote at length in his standout book, Beyond a Boundary, of the fight to install Frank Worrell as the first permanent black captain of the West Indies cricket team.
Prior to Worrell's installation as skipper for the 1960-61 tour of Australia, the captain had always been European.
James even noted that in the Caribbean's early dalliance with the game, black players were almost always bowlers — a situation that was often found in India too.
The root of this discrimination against bowlers can be found in the old distinctions between Gentlemen and Players that existed in English cricket right up until 1962.
Gentlemen were (nominally, at least) amateurs, playing for the thrill and of sufficient personal wealth not to need remuneration for missing work — although expenses were still paid for travel.
The professionals, or Players, were those most unconscionable individuals who went against the Corinthian spirit that Victorian sport was built on by requesting payment for their time so as to make a living from their sport.
Generally speaking, Players were bowlers and lower class, while the Gentlemen were batsmen and of the educated middle or upper class.
A casual look at England's earliest Test captains (all batsmen) illustrates the social class from which they came, with two Knights of the Realm, two Lords and an Earl represented before the outbreak of World War I.
Symptomatic of this discrimination is former England skipper Mike Brearley's assertion of what it takes to be a captain in his book, The Art of Captaincy.
"In England, charisma and leadership have traditionally been associated with the upper class; with that social strata that gives its members what [writer and poet] Kingsley Amis called 'the voice accustomed to command'," he wrote.
Not until 1952 did a professional get the nod to captain England — Yorkshire's Len Hutton breaking the class barrier and going on to captain 23 Tests, winning 11 and drawing 8.
By the way, he was a batsman.
It's unclear why this would have been the case in the notionally classless society of Australia, but was best illustrated by the glaring omission from the nations captaincy ranks of Keith Miller — even if he was an all rounder rather than a pure quick.
It was suggested that Miller's espousal of the lighter side of the game perhaps made him less suitable for the more arduous diplomatic side of captaincy that was necessary in that post-War era.
Injuries, availability also plays a role
Although there have been some notable exceptions in the past few decades — Shaun Pollock (South Africa), Kapil Dev (India), Imran Khan, Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis (Pakistan) and Jason Holder, Darren Sammy and Courtney Walsh (West Indies) for example — bowlers have tended to be shunned as captains globally.
There are some more reasonable suggestions as to why this is, that ignore which public school they went to.
One is that bowlers are more susceptible to injury and rotation.
The other is that their primary skill is being utilised when in the field, the exact time that a captain's skills come into their own — captains that are batsmen have an obvious advantage over bowlers in this instance.
Brearley, who was arguably selected as a result of his captaincy over his ability with bat or ball, wrote of the difficulties he felt bowlers would face if they were also burdened with the captaincy.
"It takes an exceptional character to know when to bowl, to keep bowling with all his energy screwed up into a ball of aggression, and to be sensitive to the needs of the team, both tactically and psychologically," he wrote.
Derek Pringle, a player-turned-journalist who played under Willis, wrote in The Cricket Paper that he "would martial proceedings from mid-off often in a daze, his bowling, with its long and winding run, having taken so much out of him".
Willis, incidentally, was the last fast bowler to captain England.
In fact, if Andrew Flintoff and Ian Botham are excluded on account of their being all rounders, England has selected only Willis as a regular, fast-bowling skipper since World War II.
He skippered 18 Tests, winning seven and losing five, with six draws — far from the worst record, but his exertions as England's premier strike bowler in the early 1980s did affect his captaincy.
England stalwart James Anderson has long backed bowlers as captains, having been overlooked for the top job throughout his long and distinguished career.
"Bowlers do think a lot about the game," he said earlier this month.
"You can see he leads brilliantly in the team. He's a leader of the bowling attack and you can see he's got that ability, so why not give him a chance?
"There are lots of arguments why it would suit to have a bowler as captain, but it's just not the done thing, is it?
"Captains like to look good at first slip and look like they're making all the field-position changes and doing all the good stuff. But I'm all for it."
