An important man in Tasmania's middle order for the past few seasons, George Bailey added the captaincy to his list of responsibilities for 2009-10. He had been the deputy under Daniel Marsh for three seasons and it was no surprise, when Marsh stepped down, that Bailey was named as his successor. In his first season as full-time captain he led the Tigers to the FR Cup title and, having been the competition's second-top scorer with 538 runs at 59.77 including his first century, was called into Australia's ODI squad for the Chappell-Hadlee Series in March 2010. He didn't play any match in that series, but his captaincy for Tasmania so impressed the selectors that he was named Australia's Twenty20 captain in the 2011-12 season. That made him the first player since Dave Gregory in the first Test match in 1877, to be named captain in his first match for Australia in any format. This despite his ordinary batting record in the format: he'd scored only one T20 half-century in the last three seasons.