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Is test cricket about to enter a golden phase of captaincy?

GotSpin

Hall of Fame Member
When was this? I can only find a test in 2008 where part-timers didn't really bowl and India won easily, and one in 2004 that Australia won easily and Ponting wasn't even playing

edit: not saying I don't believe you just interested in seeing the context
It was seriously ****ing bad - I remember watching it at the time and wanting to break the TV

Having said that, a good captain doesn't necessarily involve funky field placements. Clarke was far more tactically superior but he was a terrible leader of people and this was reflected in the turmoil that plagued the dressing room for years. You could tell that the team would run through brick walls for Ponting.

I think TC briefly mentioned it before about how it was traditionally unusual for a captain to play on for Australia after losing the throne. Ponting himself has admitted that he knew he had already reached his peak, and I'll always respect that he continued to play on when we desperately needed him despite damage to his record.

I've never thought of Ponting has arrogant or selfish either. The bloke clearly wore his heart on his sleeve and wasn't well adept at at hiding his emotions, but I've yet to hear a negative comment regarding his personality off the field
 
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Top_Cat

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It was seriously ****ing bad - I remember watching it at the time and wanting to break the TV
Same. The day before, everyone was talking about Dhoni's 8-1 fields like they were killing Test cricket. Ponting's captaincy was what made me turn off the TV and I'm a huge fan of the guy.

Definitely agree he was a huge presence as skipper. Noone worked harder at all aspects of his game.
 

Spark

Global Moderator
It was seriously ****ing bad - I remember watching it at the time and wanting to break the TV

Having said that, a good captain doesn't necessarily involve funky field placements. Clarke was far more tactically superior but he was a terrible leader of people and this was reflected in the turmoil that plagued the dressing room for years. You could tell that the team would run through brick walls for Ponting.

I think TC briefly mentioned it before about how it was traditionally unusual for a captain to play on for Australia after losing the throne. Ponting himself has admitted that he knew he had already reached his peak, and I'll always respect that he continued to play on when we desperately needed him despite damage to his record.

I've never thought of Ponting has arrogant or selfish either. The bloke clearly wore his heart on his sleeve and wasn't well adept at at hiding his emotions, but I've yet to hear a negative comment regarding his personality off the field
Yeah, same. Plenty of players of his calibre or below who wouldn't and didn't do the same.
 

subshakerz

International Coach
Captaincy does not have a quantifiable measure like batting average or strike rate so captaincy basically gets judged on completely arbitrary factors like "body lanugage" and "aggression" and "intent or if you've been captain long enough, then the massive series defeat or something horrible that happened which people just remember and it becomes your legacy sort of.

Ponting's captaincy legacy has become the 3 Ashes defeats including a home Ashes defeat, plus that India series which ultimately outweighs the 5-0, win in Sri Lanka, South Africa etc.

Dhoni's captaincy legacy became 0-8 in England and Australia, which outweighed 1-1 in South Africa (still the best ever result by India in South Africa), series win in New Zealand, not to mention the home domination

Ganguly never won a test series outside of Asia, but is generally considered a great captain mainly because of 2001 Kolkata and the 1-1 in Australia in the following series. This is a really interesting one because when I ask fans about why they think Ganguly is so great, a lot of what they associate with Ganguly happened under other captains - for example people say We won in England under Ganguly (Dravid was captain) or we won in Australia (2003 was a draw)

Waugh is considered a great captain because people associate the All Time Great Australian side of the noughties with him, The unbeaten streak started with him really with the 99 series against India and Pakistan.

These are not necessarily valid assessments but until there is some quantifiable measure of captaincy, captains will always be judged on arbitrary factors that people happen to remember
I think a really easy way of judging a captain is to look at how the team performed before he was captain and whether taking the helm improved these performances. Of course there are other intangibles, such as building your team and tactics and the quality of opposition your face, but in the end your captaincy has to demonstrate some improvement in the performance of the team that can be quantitatively or qualitatively shown for you to be considered a good captain. To be a great captain, you need to add the intangibles.

So I would rate Imran Khan ahead of many captains even though his overall captaincy record in terms of number of wins was not that impressive but his side demonstrated a tremendous improvement from previous Pakistan ones in being unbeatable at home and competitive abroad. Same with Ganguly, not the greatest captaincy record, but in India's context, he helped mold a team which began winning tests away from home that they didnt do previously. And Mark Taylor did the same from Border's side.

In Ponting's case, he continued the winning streak when he started, but while many say he kept Australia competitive, I would beg to differ. Nobody was expecting them to win in India, but the English and SA sides that beat Australia were around the same level of quality yet he lost to both despite having the home advantage.
 

Adders

Cricketer Of The Year
I think a really easy way of judging a captain is to look at how the team performed before he was captain and whether taking the helm improved these performances. Of course there are other intangibles, such as building your team and tactics and the quality of opposition your face, but in the end your captaincy has to demonstrate some improvement in the performance of the team that can be quantitatively or qualitatively shown for you to be considered a good captain. To be a great captain, you need to add the intangibles.

So I would rate Imran Khan ahead of many captains even though his overall captaincy record in terms of number of wins was not that impressive but his side demonstrated a tremendous improvement from previous Pakistan ones in being unbeatable at home and competitive abroad. Same with Ganguly, not the greatest captaincy record, but in India's context, he helped mold a team which began winning tests away from home that they didnt do previously. And Mark Taylor did the same from Border's side.

In Ponting's case, he continued the winning streak when he started, but while many say he kept Australia competitive, I would beg to differ. Nobody was expecting them to win in India, but the English and SA sides that beat Australia were around the same level of quality yet he lost to both despite having the home advantage.
This also needs some context added to it though. He continued the winning streak with an ATG side and when a bunch of them retired within 2 years England and South Africa had good enough sides to capitalise on the weaker Australia despite them having home advantage. You can't replace Shane Warne with Xavier Doherty, Glenn McGrath with Doug Bollinger etc and expect the results to keep coming.

Edit:

I always think Pontings record as captain flatters him a little as for the most of it he had a side that my granny could have skippered. But the flip side of that is you can't judge him too harshly for the end of career results when his great players were replaced with middle of the pack ones.

IMO he wasn't a bad captain and as others have mentioned I think his greatest strengths were off the field rather than on it, but I also don't think he was a great one.
 
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smash84

The Tiger King
People seem to be underrating the soft skills when it comes to captaincy. I don't know much about how tactically sound Misbah was but it was all those other intangibles that made him a great captain.

Ponting had that too. Was a proper leader. Imagine someone like Root trying to lead those guys, you think a bloke like Symonds is going listen to what the kid has to say?
Great post. Arguably the biggest part of captaincy is man management. Some really good ones over the years. Ian Chappell, Imran, Border, Ganguly, Dhoni, Graeme Smith, Stephen Fleming, Misbah, Ranatunga etc. All these guys commanded respect from their team mates and got the best out of their players. The players would listen to them. What exactly made the guys listen to them was probably different in each case but all of these guys were fantastic man managers with different sorts of soft skills which made them great.
 

Black_Warrior

Cricketer Of The Year
^ And this also highlights how much of the game is not quantitative and a large part of that is captaincy/leadership/the human aspect. How to you asses in data what Faf just did with Morris there?
 

subshakerz

International Coach
^ And this also highlights how much of the game is not quantitative and a large part of that is captaincy/leadership/the human aspect. How to you asses in data what Faf just did with Morris there?
The team's performance improved so that is how you quantify it.
 

Black_Warrior

Cricketer Of The Year
That still does not quantify captaincy though. The numbers go in favour of Morris the bowler. There is nothing that gets added to Faf's career stats.
 
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TheJediBrah

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The team's performance improved so that is how you quantify it.
No that would be absurd. If that's how you quantify it then you're effectively saying that there are no other factors that determine a team's performance other than the captaincy.
 

Dan

Hall of Fame Member
I reckon if you combined the best parts of Ponting with the best parts of Clarke, you'd have one hell of a captain.

Which is probably Frank Worrell or someone like that.
 

subshakerz

International Coach
No that would be absurd. If that's how you quantify it then you're effectively saying that there are no other factors that determine a team's performance other than the captaincy.
No, thats not what I am saying. Im not saying that if a team improves it is only due to captaincy. What I am saying is that the ultimate judge of any captain, be it through their tactics or man management skills, is if the team performance improves under his captaincy. What constitutes 'improvement' though can be debated. It may not be just through more wins and less losses, especially if he is regularly playing vastly superior teams or vastly inferior teams.

It is kind of hard to suggest someone is a good captain if his captaincy has no positive effect on team performance. That is the whole point of captaincy.
 

Adders

Cricketer Of The Year
AWTA to a degree, but there are other factors to consider as well.

EG Australia under Ponting went from ATG side to a significantly weaker one. You cant pin the retirements of 4 or 5 great players during his tenure on his captaincy.
 

Daemon

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No, thats not what I am saying. Im not saying that if a team improves it is only due to captaincy. What I am saying is that the ultimate judge of any captain, be it through their tactics or man management skills, is if the team performance improves under his captaincy. What constitutes 'improvement' though can be debated. It may not be just through more wins and less losses, especially if he is regularly playing vastly superior teams or vastly inferior teams.

It is kind of hard to suggest someone is a good captain if his captaincy has no positive effect on team performance. That is the whole point of captaincy.
You said you can quantify it. How so?
 

TheJediBrah

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No, thats not what I am saying. Im not saying that if a team improves it is only due to captaincy. What I am saying is that the ultimate judge of any captain, be it through their tactics or man management skills, is if the team performance improves under his captaincy. What constitutes 'improvement' though can be debated. It may not be just through more wins and less losses, especially if he is regularly playing vastly superior teams or vastly inferior teams.

It is kind of hard to suggest someone is a good captain if his captaincy has no positive effect on team performance. That is the whole point of captaincy.
How is that quantifying it though, as you said? It can't be, because, as I said, you can't use team performance or improvement as a quantitative measure because there are obviously many other factors in play
 

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