I have a question for the cricket experts and afficianados.
I am curious to know who make better captains, as per history. Is it the All Rounders or great batsmen/bowlers?
Who is a better captain? - The one in whose reign there was visible team satisfaction, understanding, bonding, performance, a high number of world records and wins...
Is there any research that proves that all rounders make better captains? Is there a correlation at all between a captain's professional skills and the team's performance? Which means, does it depend only on the captain's people-skills and not related to whether the captain is an all-rounder/batsman/bowler? Looking forward to some enlightening responses...
5 comments:
Yes, it is important that a captain be professionally sound - one who performs in each cricketing domain on the field - an allrounder would be great! The people-thing falls in place for an "allrounder-captain", as he was also once another team member, and has known the ups, the downs, the field, the bat and the ball! A lucky captain (oh! he'd rather choose to call himself a people's man) would only account for that much-hyped 1% versus the neglected 99% toil, but would never get us the world cup!
If World cup winning track record is concerned, then apart from the first (Clyve Lloyd) and the last (Ricky Ponting) captains to have won the World Cup, every one of the following were all time best all rounders:
1. Kapil Dev - 1983
2. Allan Border - 1987
3. Imran Khan - 1992
4. Arjuna Ranatunga - 1996
5. Steven Waugh - 1999
Apart from these captains - Vivian Richards, Hansie Cronje, Saurav Ganguly, Wasim Akram, Salim Malik... - the list of Hall of Fame captain can go on and on and on when we consider All Rounder Captains. There can be a frequent occurance of Batting captains in the list too...
But, bowling has always been the weaker link when it comes to producing better captains is concerned (in my opinion).
However, a few flop captains can also be listed with the All Rounder tag against them like - Sachin Tendulkar, Sanath Jayasurya and Carl Hooper...
Mani,
It goes without saying that I was waiting for your comments! I knew I could rely on you to provide me with the facts as well as the analysis! :)
So, going by what you say, it takes a 'generalist'! Have you also looked at their people-skills and other softer aspects?
Nimmy
Yep, I forgot to addess the People Skills and their leadership skills when it comes to mapping to the team's success is concerned. Here are a few observations I made 'worshipping' cricket all thru the years -
1. Age of the Captain Vs People Skills:
A good captain is not the one who makes his team perform intermittently. So, u cud never rely on the English press when they report abt a captain (They tend to compare Andy Flintoff with Don Braddman when he wins a Man of the series in one tournament involving poor bowling teams). Coming back to the topic - Consistency is the name of the game. We all have seen how Allan Border and Arjuna Ranatunga have led the Aussies and the Lankans respectively to the peak from nowhere when they tookover (However, the latter's learning phase was huge). We have seen Hansie Cronje's, Mohd. Azharuddin's, Steven Waugh's, Vivian Richard's prove that with the amount of people skills they obtained as they grew old, the team's consistancy grew smoothly as well as the captains age. That's why we are unable to forget these names no matter whatever circumstances have forced them out of the game.
The prime leadership qualities of these captains are Control on the team, Staying cool and calm is any situation, Meaning business to the core (the leadership qualities of young captains - to be discussed later - are mostly inherent in these players).
However, old captains are not by default the best. Ex: Graham Gooch, Bishensingh Bedi, Clive Rice . The list can go on and their failures can be attributed to the people skills they had compared to the cricketing skills they had.
2. Young and Dynamic Captains -
Young captains will never come up unless they show and build the confidence in the team members. The amount of confidence they show in the team is directly proportional to the people skill they possess, I feel. It's a very rare combination. Some of the young captains who are in the Hall of Fame today are able to keep up their tag as captains due to their above mentioned quality. To name a few examples - Saurav Ganguly, Stephen Flemming, Graem Smith, Ricky Ponting .
The prime leadership qualities of these players (the second category)are Controlling their exitement and emotions, Lead the team by example, Thirst to learn from failure, Thirst to taste success repeatitively and most importantly Not loosing temper at any stage in their career (As they keep showing these qualities consistantly, they'll move towards the 1st category list of captains discussed above).
However, assuming that young captains are always dynamic is no less than experimenting with the status of the team. A few examples here as well : Lee Germon of NZ, Tatenda Taibu of Zim, Adam Hollioke of Eng, Brian Lara of WI and the famous Sachin Tendulkar of IND .
To cap it off - One last word on the English press: The attitude of the English Press which I mentioned above (exaggeration) made sure that off late no English captain cud make it to the Hall of Fame (in the minds of cricket followers). Most of the recent (last 15 years) English captains will fall in the failure list - either young or old.
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