Mitchell Marsh to lead Western Australia for 2017-18 season

Australian all-rounder Mitchell Marsh, who is still recovering from a shoulder surgery, will lead Western Australia in the early stages of the 2017-2018 domestic season.

Marsh has been appointed in place of now-retired Adam Voges, who guided the state to the domestic One-Day Cup title in 2014-15 season.

Reflecting on the 25-year-old's appointment, coach Justin Langer revealed that it was a really tough decision because there were number of people who were eligible for the post.

"The most pleasing thing for us is that this was a really tough decision. It's been a really stringent process that has been going on for three months. The reason for that is because we had five or six guys that could have been captain. This is such an exciting stage of Western Australian cricket with two young guys leading the team. When we started out five years ago one of our objectives was to develop these guys to become great players, great leaders and great people," ESPNcricinfo quoted Langer as saying.

Langer insisted that Mitchell has a lot of international experience at such a young age, thus he would surely prove to be beneficial for the team.

"Guys like Mitch, with so much international experience at such a young age will be so beneficial to have leading the group. AT [Turner] has had recent success too which is such a good sign of what's to come from both of these amazing players. It's a really positive thing to have so many natural leaders in our group. The opportunity has gone to two fantastic young guys, knowing that they will have the support senior players like Michael Klinger and Shaun Marsh," he added.

Marsh has appeared in a total of 21 Test matches for Australia before being dropped following Australia's defeat at the hands of Sri Lanka and South Africa.

Subsequently, he revealed in March that would undergo shoulder injury and as he has not recovered fully from the same, he likely to play the One-Day Cup as batsman.