How Much Impact Can A Captain Have?

[sumantra]

there is an old saying, 'a captain is as good as his side' agreed with that?

 

[wpdavid]

there is an old saying, 'a captain is as good as his side' agreed with that?

Pretty much. Exceptions are extremely thin on the ground.

 

[sumantra]

Pretty much. Exceptions are extremely thin on the ground.

AGREED...for me, Imran Khan is one such exception...

 

[smalishah84]

I think you can add Stephen Fleming there too

 

[OMM!]

Some of Stephen Fleming's captaincy was far from inspirational though. Some of his plans consisted of bowling short and wide with 2 gullies and a backward point, hoping to get a catch there! I remember he got out Damien Martyn a number of times that way!

Cricket is fairly formulaic, especially in Test cricket. And while tactics are crucial, a good tactic to most batsmen is on or around off-stump moving it this way and that. It is only every now and again you have a specific batsman with a huge weakness i.e. Raina!

The best captains generally had great teams around them. But were the teams great because of the captaincy? Probably not. I'd say this England team could pretty much captain themselves at present, but if they get in bother, a guy like Strauss is perfect.

Cool, calm, collected and reacts well under pressure.

 

[Athlai]

Some of Stephen Fleming's captaincy was far from inspirational though. Some of his plans consisted of bowling short and wide with 2 gullies and a backward point, hoping to get a catch there! I remember he got out Damien Martyn a number of times that way!

Cricket is fairly formulaic, especially in Test cricket. And while tactics are crucial, a good tactic to most batsmen is on or around off-stump moving it this way and that. It is only every now and again you have a specific batsman with a huge weakness i.e. Raina!

The best captains generally had great teams around them. But were the teams great because of the captaincy? Probably not. I'd say this England team could pretty much captain themselves at present, but if they get in bother, a guy like Strauss is perfect.

Cool, calm, collected and reacts well under pressure.

So many contradictions.

 

[sumantra]

so many contradictions.

:d

 

[Vijay.Sharma]

I generally agree with that statement but as in everything else in the universe even this rule has it's exceptions.

The glaringly obvious exceptions are Imran Khan, Saurav Ganguly, Allan Border, Clive Lloyd, Arjuna Ranatunga, and Nasser Hussain when it comes to doing better than expected. Whereas there are exceptions like Viv Richards, Shaun Pollock, etc when it comes to doing worse than expected.

While Imran definitely had raw talent to work with his greatness lies in the fact that he got them to think beyond themselves. Same case with Lloyd. But the three caps I consider who did miracles were Border, Arjuna, and Nass

 

[sumantra]

I generally agree with that statement but as in everything else in the universe even this rule has it's exceptions.

The glaringly obvious exceptions are Imran Khan, Saurav Ganguly, Allan Border, Clive Lloyd, Arjuna Ranatunga, and Nasser Hussain when it comes to doing better than expected. Whereas there are exceptions like Viv Richards, Shaun Pollock, etc when it comes to doing worse than expected.

While Imran definitely had raw talent to work with his greatness lies in the fact that he got them to think beyond themselves. Same case with Lloyd. But the three caps I consider who did miracles were Border, Arjuna, and Nass

tendulkar also did worse than expected in my book, so did rahul dravid...

 

[keeper]

Think the overall management (including administrators, selectors, captain and, in the modern game, coach) makes a big difference but only within the limits imposed by the ability of the players. The captaincy needs to be seen in this context.

 

[Vijay.Sharma]

tendulkar also did worse than expected in my book, so did rahul dravid...

I think Rahul did a very good job. One WC first round exit does not say much about his cap'cy. He won series in WI, Eng, and almost did it in SA. He did as good as he could have because he had a great team.

Whereas in Sachin's case he was plain useless even given he had a very poor team. Srinath said in quite a few interviews that "we betrayed Sachin more often than not". Sachin as a captain just could not get his team's spirits up. But I don't think he screwed up badly when we look at it from the perspective of "captain is as good as his team". He had some of the worst overseas teams that India managed to assemble. He did well at home like Azza.

 

[Bun]

Tendulkar got captaincy thrust on him at ridiculously young age. And the last time he got, was the worst ever side to tour overseas imho. (At 26). He completely lacked what captains enjoy these days. A good infrastructure.

 

[Vijay.Sharma]

Tendulkar got captaincy thrust on him at ridiculously young age. And the last time he got, was the worst ever side to tour overseas imho. (At 26). He completely lacked what captains enjoy these days. A good infrastructure.

Even if he had a good infrastructure I don't think he could've done any good at that time. The gap between him and the rest of the team was so huge and given that he expected similar kind of commitment from his team members he was always going to be a failure when it came to capcy.

In a very candid interview Srinath said about sachin's capcy that "his expectations were a little too much from us. He thought we could play like him and he just didn't have the maturity to understand that he was a player from a different universe and we could not play like him".

If you look at Sachin as captain for Mumbai Indians he seems to be doing well simply because he has become wiser with age and has kinda acjnowledged that not everyone is a buddha.

 

[weldone]

...buddha as in 'laughing buddha'?

 

[OMM!]

So many contradictions.

My point is, bowling full tosses on leg stump ain't going to work, so you can't just do whatever you want, but the general concept of top of off tends to work for most batsmen, so it's hardly genius captaincy required.

But then you knew that anyway. Didn't you?!

Just noticed you're a Kiwi fruit, so besmirching the great Fleming must have lead to your attack on my obviously correct post!

Fleming was overrated as a captain. His tactics could have come straight out of Brian Lara Cricket on the Mega Drive.

 

[weldone]

Without proper resources, a captain can't make a great team...

Jardine's leg theory would never work without Larwood-Voce-Tate. Benaud had great players in his team, so did Bradman...and Hutton, and Sobers. Ponting and Richards were extremely lucky to have superb teams, so was Waugh and Lloyd - though the last 2 deserve some credit for grooming some of the players. Imran did a great job of grooming a great bowling lineup, but he too had good/great batsmen at his disposal that made his job easier. Ganguly and Dhoni had excellent batting lineup, and those 2 were good enough to conceal the deficiencies in their bowling attacks to an extent for some period. In short, there haven't been a captain who has yielded great results with poor cricketers.

But then again, they can do so much. Not every captain is as lucky as a Richards or a Ponting. 99.99% captains have to worry about certain gaps in their lineups. Some captains might have 2-3 good/great players in their teams, but they actually make the other 7-8 look better than they are and end up with well-performing teams. There are other captains who, in spite of having 2-3 great players in the team turn them into low-confidence shadows. Also, as with the examples of Worrell-Imran-Ganguly, there are some captains who lead the side for a long enough time and show the exceptional quality of grooming some players in some specific roles.

Captaincy is as much about being a leader of men as being a shrewd tactician. And in both ways, one actually can make his side look slightly better than it is.

 

[smalishah84]

Actually the reason that I mentioned Fleming was that he had very meagre resources and he almost always managed to make the kiwis to punch above their weight

 

[weldone]

Actually the reason that I mentioned Fleming was that he had very meagre resources and he almost always managed to make the kiwis to punch above their weight

True. He did what he could with that side (though they had some very good cricketers like Cairns, Bond).

 

[smalishah84]

Bond was off the park most of the times so he wasn't much use to Fleming. Cairns was good but good cricketers were few and far in between.

 

[sumantra]

I think Rahul did a very good job. One WC first round exit does not say much about his cap'cy. He won series in WI, Eng, and almost did it in SA. He did as good as he could have because he had a great team.

Whereas in Sachin's case he was plain useless even given he had a very poor team. Srinath said in quite a few interviews that "we betrayed Sachin more often than not". Sachin as a captain just could not get his team's spirits up. But I don't think he screwed up badly when we look at it from the perspective of "captain is as good as his team". He had some of the worst overseas teams that India managed to assemble. He did well at home like Azza.

that is a fair observation (rahul was also captain when u can say, sometimes there were controversies and debates and so many other issues beside cricket...that i think had an effect on his own batting as well, specially, the way he performed in 2006 in Engand! what otherwise has been a heaven for him...and tendulkar didnt have a great side, that is true, but it is also true that he failed to lift the side to some extent) which actually brings us back to that captain is as good as his side thing...