There is no good time for a captain to be injured, but to be confined to watching while your team play one of the most important matches in their history must be especially difficult. That is the frustration for Ed Smith, the Middlesex captain, who has been out for six weeks with a broken ankle and will be sitting with the team at the Rose Bowl in Southampton during the Twenty20 Cup Finals Day tomorrow.

If Middlesex Crusaders beat Durham Dynamos in the semi-finals, they will qualify for the Champions League, which has a mind-boggling £2.4million in prize-money. It has been a run of success that has helped to have the motion of no confidence in the Middlesex committee by disgruntled members withdrawn.

Smith said that just getting to Finals Day has been a triumph. Once the county to beat, from 1976 to 1993, Middlesex have not won a trophy since and, for the past four seasons, through defeats and relegation, have boiled away with the intrigue and rumour about dressing-room splits that tend to follow losing teams. “Whatever happens on Saturday, it's an amazing story, not just in the way the cricket was played, but in the planning behind it,” Smith said.

Smith, cricketer and author, believes that Middlesex are 18 months into the kind of cultural revolution that Mike Brearley effected during the 1970s and cites the progress in the Twenty20 Cup, from being statistically the worst team in the first five years of the competition, as clear evidence. “I believe it should be overwhelmingly clear that this club is on an upward curve,” Smith said.

Ed Joyce has been captaining the team in Smith's absence and will have a key weapon back for Finals Day, with Dirk Nannes having recovered from a hip injury. Smith said: “I will be in the dugout, like I have been for every game. I won't be making any huge presentations to the lads before the game. I'll maybe say a few short things before handing over to the guys on the day.

“It's been weird to sit on the outside, but there have been so many positives. Dawid Malan coming through, Dirk Nannes getting hat-tricks, Eoin Morgan showing what a fantastic talent he is.It's been very satisfying and also very frustrating, but that's life.”

Since “the summer of four captains” in 2004, when Andrew Strauss was called into the England team and the job bounced from Owais Shah to Joyce to Ben Hutton, the Middlesex captaincy has seemed a poisoned chalice. Smith was made captain in November 2006 after Hutton stepped down after his second season ended with two relegations.

“The grand strategy is to take a club that had been used to losing and get rid of the excuse culture and develop a hard edge,” Smith said. “The question I asked myself is, ‘What had changed between the early Seventies and 1976 [when Middlesex won their first County Championship title since 1949]?' Mike Brearley was made captain and it took him four or five years to take a team of famous people who weren't winning and develop a team of less famous people who did win.

“These days that's not a model you want to follow slavishly because people are much more impatient. But having spoken to Mike about it, cultural change does not happen overnight.

“A good leader is looking for a trend before it's obvious to everyone else. Sometimes there aren't that many far-sighted people to do that. We're trying to build for the future, as well as winning now, and I don't see the two things as contradictory.”

With Billy Godleman, Malan, Morgan, Steve Finn and Danny Evans aged 21 or under and performing well, the future could be bright. The committee must make some tough decisions, which will not be popular with everyone.

“Most people are happy and honoured to be playing for Middlesex, but the most important thing is having people who want to play for the team,” Smith said. “We need everyone to feel like that. So some of the people who don't feel like that now, they've got to refresh their excitement about playing for Middlesex.

“Any club, every institution, needs leadership. The very concept of leadership is the opposite of management by muddle, keeping everyone happy for the sake of it, self-protection.

“You need to be brave as a captain, you need to be bold, you need to have self-belief and a thick skin.”

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