Ross Taylor likely to be shafted from the captaincy?

[Hurricane]

I think in practice PEWS is accurate the captaincy goes to an established player who would make the best captain.

I think in my opinion however of the way it should be is that the captaincy should go to the BEST batsman who wants the job.

I don't think captaincy is amazingly difficult. And it is something you can learn if you are not gifted. Players win games not captains. You can make a very clever batting order but you can't bat for people. You can ring the bowling changes as much as you want but you can't bowl for people.

I reckon giving the captaincy to the best batsman is a reward for his performance and secondly it makes sense as he can command, usually, the most aura, mana, and respect from his team mates through his performances. When he speaks people will listen and it will mean the most. Usually.

Therefore I was fine with Flem comparing the batting records of McCullum and Taylor and thought is was germaine.

I have used the word usually twice as you do need to have good people skills or you can lose the team and then you need to be replaced. I don't know why Taylor doesn't have the full support of the team but I gently suspect that it is not of his doing that he doesn't have their support and is more due to machinations of another.

One thing has become clear to me upon reading this thread. Taylor can't continue as captain in this environment. How can he captain without the full support of his coach who has instead asked him to resign.

For Taylor to continue as captain Hesson needs to be removed - this is clear to me. It will be a shame to lose Hesson after a short reign but nobody asked him to behave in this fashion.

My caveat on all of this is that if Taylor has lost the dressing room through being aloof, or bad man management skills then it is him that needs to go. And we simply don't know.

[SteveNZ]

Originally Posted by Hurricane

I don't think captaincy is amazingly difficult. And it is something you can learn if you are not gifted. Players win games not captains.

I enjoy your Munro watch but I'm not so sure about your naivety on captaincy my friend.

[Zinzan]

Originally Posted by Hurricane

I think in practice PEWS is accurate the captaincy goes to an established player who would make the best captain.

I think in my opinion however of the way it should be is that the captaincy should go to the BEST batsman who wants the job.

I don't think captaincy is amazingly difficult. And it is something you can learn if you are not gifted. Players win games not captains. You can make a very clever batting order but you can't bat for people. You can ring the bowling changes as much as you want but you can't bowl for people.

I'm sorry to say but you are displaying a great ignorance of cricket history by simply asserting the best batsman who wants the job should take the reigns. You are massively underselling the nous, intuition, temperament, diplomacy and thick-skin required from a modern-day test skipper.

Here's a few names for you to ponder who certainly weren't the best batsmen in their respective teams, but were fine captains nonetheless, and that's saying nothing of the bowling & allrounders who have captained sides.

Mike Brearley
Mark Taylor
Jeremy Coney
Arjuna Ranatunga
Ian Chappell
Hansie Cronje (prior to match-fixing)

On the other side of the coin, there's many example of a teams best batsman turning out to be awful captains.

For the record, I'm very much a supporter of Taylor holding on the NZ spot, but that doesn't make your premise above valid in any way.

[Hurricane]

Originally Posted by SteveNZ

I enjoy your Munro watch but I'm not so sure about your naivety on captaincy my friend.

Well that's what I think - I think it is the most over rated skill in cricket. Each captain has his own strengths and weaknesses. Some will get some decisions right and some will get other decisions right. At the end of the day most captains make completely different decisions but are equally effective. There have been some captains who have turned out to be stellar such as Mike Brearley - but most captains are just decent. There are very few captains who get sacked a year into their reign because they were tactically inept. There are some examples yes, but most captains do a decent job.

If you picked McCullum he would do a decent job. In the ODIs he captained the wheels did not fall off the cart. If you picked Williamson he would be surprisingly ok so long as he had support from his coach. Williamson would not be a boob. Daniel Flynn would be fine tactically. So would James Franklin tactically. If you have an IQ of 110 or higher you can be a captain. The only people who can't be captains are people who are stupid and very few international cricketers are stupid. Or people with poor people skills.

[Mike5181]

Originally Posted by Hurricane

I think in practice PEWS is accurate the captaincy goes to an established player who would make the best captain.

I think in my opinion however of the way it should be is that the captaincy should go to the BEST batsman who wants the job.

I don't think captaincy is amazingly difficult. And it is something you can learn if you are not gifted. Players win games not captains. You can make a very clever batting order but you can't bat for people. You can ring the bowling changes as much as you want but you can't bowl for people.

I reckon giving the captaincy to the best batsman is a reward for his performance and secondly it makes sense as he can command, usually, the most aura, mana, and respect from his team mates through his performances. When he speaks people will listen and it will mean the most. Usually.

There's more to captaincy than setting batting and bowling orders ffs.

[Flem274*]

Captains need to be leaders. Being a leader isn't easy at all, especially on tour when you have to be "The Leader" 24 hours a day for a month.

Being a leader of a side with traditionally strong egos and difficult personalities, combined with often poor results? Probably the hardest job in New Zealand sport.

[Hurricane]

Originally Posted by Mike5181

There's more to captaincy than setting batting and bowling orders ffs.

80% of the job is

The batting order - which in international cricket the selectors seem to have a say in.
Who bowls next - which is probably discussed at length for various scenarios some time in advance with your coach.
The field settings - which should be based on a strategy for each opposition player and in part agreed to by the video analyst and the coach as much as the captain.
Team talks - which I have already mentioned come best from the best batsman on the team.

Those are the core competencies - and then there is man management and personally inspiring people. Which again is best done by someone with an aura.

[hendrix]

I mostly agree with Hurricane.

The captain shouldn't have to inspire uninspired players. Motivational speeches don't score runs if the batsmen themselves aren't self motivated. It's simply doing your job.

There are support staff and coaches that can come up with tactical plans and field sets to each batsman.

However, the captain still has to make the tough calls about what to implement, and the on field decisions. He cannot do that when he is being undermined by his coach and his senior players. I can imagine what it's like: people questioning your decisions, not batting where they're asked to bat (t20 world cup anyone?) etc etc.

Hesson has to go.

[Zinzan]

[Zinzan]

Originally Posted by hendrix

I mostly agree with Hurricane.

The captain shouldn't have to inspire uninspired players.

There are support staff and coaches that can come up with tactical plans and field sets to each batsman.

However, the captain still has to make the tough calls about what to implement, and the on field decisions. He cannot do that when he is being undermined by his coach and his senior players. I can imagine what it's like: people questioning your decisions, not batting where they're asked to bat (t20 world cup anyone?) etc etc.

Hesson has to go.

We mustn't get confused in whether Taylor's the best captaincy option for NZ atm and whether the best batsman in the team should automatically be made captain. It's not complicated.

[Pup Clarke]

Originally Posted by hendrix

The captain shouldn't have to inspire uninspired players.

No, of course not. He should just let events fester between players until they get out of control - then do something.

[hendrix]

Originally Posted by Pup Clarke

No, of course not. He should just let events fester between players until they get out of control - then do something.

what does that have to do with what I said?

[HolyHandGrenade]

If this is true, then...

We wish you luck on your future endeavours, Mr Hesson.

[Flem274*]

I've calmed down enough now to make my case for Taylor.

To me, Taylor comes across as a calm, measured bloke with a quiet steel to him. He isn't going to shout about how great he is, but he is going to get in there and do the job. He backs his players - witness him talking up Doug Bracewell before the Australian series - and keeps the faith. I'd be very disappointed if Bracewell is in this "bullish end of the bowling attack" because a more conservative captain would not have kept the faith through Bracewell's inconsistency considering the bowling depth we have. Taylor also doesn't come out and whinge about the players he is given by the selectors, which Vettori was prone to on occassion (remember when Martin was dropped and Vettori gave Gillespie the rope to hang himself with against Gayle?).

Taylor is no tactical genius. He isn't awful, and rotates his bowlers well, ensuring they get enough rest between spells and he backs his bowlers to get the wickets, but he doesn't have that spark as a tactician either. For a captain in his first year, this is hardly surprising. Fleming wasn't a genius from the get-go, and despite Vettori being Fleming's understudy for years he was also just an okay captain.

However, Taylor does lead by example. I listed those innings before - time and again he comes in at 2 for nothing (guess who contributes to those two fallen wickets so often?) and is required to score a ton. Taylor is often the only reason we post half decent totals, which is another reason for whichever bowler it is to sit down and zip it.

I can't see inside the changing room, but I'd be pretty surprised if Taylor is an arse to his players. There has not been a single bad word said about the guy before he became captain, and there still hasn't been. There has not been a single rumour that Taylor is abusive, socially retarded or arrogant, and these things have a way of getting out. All we know is Hesson and McCullum are two peas in a pod, McCullum wants to be captain, and Hesson asked Taylor to step down before the test series just gone. As was said earlier, Taylor telling Hesson where to go is the single piece of leadership we have seen in this entire debacle.

As for his results, I think the wider public forgets that under Vettori we were D-I-R-E. Yes, Vettori has less able players barring two certain individuals (one of whom stood up and did the job and the other didn't), but we didn't turf him based on results despite him being to that side what Taylor is to the current side. Taylor has two overseas victories to his credit and he was man of the match in one. Outside Bangladesh Vettori beat no one overseas.

As for McCullum, well it is hard to judge his captaincy when he hasn't captained the side consistently yet. He has had to show his abilities as a leader in other ways. He certainly hasn't been a leader with the bat, and by the sounds of it in the dressing room he's been stirring the pot. Who knows, maybe he's been going to the Daniel Flynn's and Kane Williamson's and helping them in the nets. Maybe Taylor took one look at Franklin's bowling gaining about 30kph after that wicket in the first test and called him a ****ing milksop lazy ****. McCullum has lead the side a few times in ODIs and hasn't wowed me with his tactics, in fact I think we lost, and to top it he captained KKR for a reasonable length of time and they sucked.

The media has reported Taylor has lost the backing of the senior players. First of all, what senior players? The average age of the side is 14. The only players remotely senior are Taylor, McCullum, Vettori and Martin. Guptill has 30 odd tests so lets throw him in that group as well. That's a pretty small group. I'd love to hear some names, rather than the cowardly backstabbing we have at present. The rest of the side doesn't exactly scream politics either. Okay, maybe Southee, Bracewell and Wagner have outspoken personalities but they seem happy to abuse batsmen rather than team mates. Williamson and Flynn give off a no bull**** air so who is in which camp exactly?

I don't know, I just thought that after a test win in Sri Lanka that maybe they could all do their bit for the good of the team going forward but no, it's back to kindy again. How this lot expect the public to support them when they turn around and kick their fans in the nuts over and over again is beyond me.

That didn't exactly end as a calm post did it? Oh well.

[Bahnz]

You make a good point about Vettori's reign as captain. Remove test matches against Bangladesh, and in his first year as captain, New Zealand played 10 tests and lost 8 of them (with one Mills inspired win, and a soggy draw at Lords). If anyone had doubts about his position, nobody breathed a word of it to the media. And yet his record was even worse than Taylor's. Tbf to Vettori, he came on as captain at a very difficult time. Astle, McMillan, Styris and Fleming all departed from the test side immediately before or shortly after he started, and Bond and Andre Adams were driven away by the NZC and John Bracewell respectively, so a bad run was only to be expected. Vettori was given understanding and time by his fellow players and the NZC.

It strikes me as very strange that Taylor hasn't been given the same courtesy. The team is in better shape now than it was when Vettori abdicated, at least in terms of the bowling and the top 4 (the middle-order from 5-8 is distinctly weaker than it was in 2011, but that's not Taylor's fault).

I'm also fascinated by who's siding with who. At a guess:

Taylor: Bracewell, Guptill
McCullum: Vettori, Franklin, Southee

The rest are either too young are not well enough established to know for certain. But I'm guessing McCullum's more aggressive and active personality is likely to have bullied them round to his side. But really it's impossible to know (beyond Vettori - it's been known for some time that he favours McCullum) for certain. Should be some interesting books coming out in the next few years.