Who was Australia's greatest ever captain?

[jimmy101]

Cricket is very cult-like by definition.

 

[Burgey]

Australia is not the final frontier for India. If at all India manages to defeat Aus this year( I think it is unlikely), SA will be the final frontier.

Lol India has never won a series in Australia. You’ve been coming here since 1947 ffs

 

[jimmy101]

You guys still have numerous final frontiers out there I'm afraid.

 

[h_hurricane]

You guys still have numerous final frontiers out there I'm afraid.

2 of them. Test series in Aus and SA. In the futures if T20s become the face of cricket (I am afraid we are going in that direction), Aus still have one final frontier (winning a T20 world cup).

 

[jimmy101]

By the time T20 takes over the world I will have gone the same way as the Jonestownians ;-)

 

[h_hurricane]

Lol India has never won a series in Australia. You’ve been coming here since 1947 ffs

There is always a first time.

 

[Victor Ian]

2 of them. Test series in Aus and SA. In the futures if T20s become the face of cricket (I am afraid we are going in that direction), Aus still have one final frontier (winning a T20 world cup).

Some people are satisfied with **** instead of gold. Australia have won all the gold.
It might be nice to win a T20 World Cup, but only to save on buying manure for the gardens.

 

[h_hurricane]

Some people are satisfied with **** instead of gold. Australia have won all the gold.
It might be nice to win a T20 World Cup, but only to save on buying manure for the gardens.

Going by the way the current Aus team is performing ( lost Ashes in England, lost test series in SA, lost in India, got owned in SL, defeated in UAE and embarassingly lost in BD), many will have to get satisfied with **** instead of gold in the foreseen future.

 

[the big bambino]

Yawn.

 

[h_hurricane]

Yawn.

May be it is time to sleep for you. By the way, I am not arguing that many other teams going around are less ****. But it is all the more painful when you were always "gold" and turn into **** later.

 

[Bolo]

Clarke was fairly good tactically but that's not really the whole job is it

Ponting cops a lack of flak for his tactical blunders and rightfully so. But you just know the rest of the team would have run through a brick wall for him.

If given the choice between the two right now, batting skills aside, it's Ponting every day for me.

QUOTE=GotSpin;4115295]Clarke was fairly good tactically but that's not really the whole job is it


Not sure I have the timing Pat, but it felt like AUS wee going full WI decline. Zero bowlers. Couple decent bats but no form and maybe starting the death spiral. After Clarke bats find form, bowlers learn how to play for first time, a good selection of two, suddenly team is good. Some coincidence maybe. You can never really be sure what the impact captaincy is having. But this is looking good

Mitch has been deadweight to Ponting for years. Clarke takes over and he's suddenly goat. He's only running through walls for one guy and it's not Ponting. Maybe he hated Clarke so much that he was bowling in pure anger. Whatever, it worked. Maybe Clarke was a brat who refused to knuckle down with the bat under Ponting. Still worked.

Team goes from garbage to good. If he's not overseeing an implosion like this year, this should be the main thing.

Anyway, not to say Clarke is amazing. Maybe Ponting in decline just sucked for a short while and made Clarke look good in comparison, but was actually better over career. Maybe my memory is hazy.
But grumpy players only becomes the definitive argument when it has an effect.

 

[TheJediBrah]

QUOTE=GotSpin;4115295]Clarke was fairly good tactically but that's not really the whole job is it


Not sure I have the timing Pat, but it felt like AUS wee going full WI decline. Zero bowlers. Couple decent bats but no form and maybe starting the death spiral. After Clarke bats find form, bowlers learn how to play for first time, a good selection of two, suddenly team is good. Some coincidence maybe. You can never really be sure what the impact captaincy is having. But this is looking good

Mitch has been deadweight to Ponting for years. Clarke takes over and he's suddenly goat. He's only running through walls for one guy and it's not Ponting. Maybe he hated Clarke so much that he was bowling in pure anger. Whatever, it worked. Maybe Clarke was a brat who refused to knuckle down with the bat under Ponting. Still worked.

Team goes from garbage to good. If he's not overseeing an implosion like this year, this should be the main thing.

Anyway, not to say Clarke is amazing. Maybe Ponting in decline just sucked for a short while and made Clarke look good in comparison, but was actually better over career. Maybe my memory is hazy.
But grumpy players only becomes the definitive argument when it has an effect.

I think you're under a bit of a false impression of how good Australia were pre and post-Clarke, relatively. They weren't that bad right before Clarke took over, it was mostly just the 1 home Ashes series they lost that caused an uproar. Nor were they really that great after Clarke took over. They stayed pretty much the same in terms of the team's ability IMO. It was a big change between the last Ponting series and the first Clarke series (in SL), but that was just one series either side.

 

[GotSpin]

Ponting just used Johnson really poorly. Bowled him into the ground

 

[cnerd123]

Ponting just used Johnson really poorly. Bowled him into the ground

Isn't that just a point in favour of Clarke being a better captain?

 

[subshakerz]

For me, it is Mark Taylor. He took a good team from Border and made them into the best in the world. Tactically excellent, a super man manager and injected a positive, aggressive style to Aussie cricket.

The main reason I rate Taylor so highly is because he had three strong teams who were potential no.1s of his time (WI, Pakistan and SA) and he beat each in their home yards. That is impressive.

Waugh was good but overrated. By his time, the other teams had weakened significantly and Australia were far ahead. Not so tactically great, and his only real challenge were to win in the subcontinent which he didnt do. And contrary to popular perception, Waugh also lost dead rubber tests too.

Border deserves a lot of credit for transforming an Aussie side in the dumps, but still had a comparatively conservative style of captaincy from from I heard.

Ponting lost three Ashes so there's no redemption for that.

 

[cnerd123]

You can't simultaneously say Waugh had a good team and deserves no credit for that yet hold it against Ponting for losing the Ashes

 

[GotSpin]

Isn't that just a point in favour of Clarke being a better captain?

Ponting was worse tactically. Clarke a much ****ter bloke though

 

[subshakerz]

You can't simultaneously say Waugh had a good team and deserves no credit for that yet hold it against Ponting for losing the Ashes

You can give credit to Waugh for building a superb team but I tend to rank captains based on what they achieve with the resources they have versus the challenges they encounter.

Ponting had an equal if not better team than England in 2005 and 2009 and lost both series. In 2010, England may have been a better team, but not to the extent of losing three tests by an innings at home.

 

[cnerd123]

Is there any way to find out the list of players who debuted under a certain captain? I'm trying to look this up in order to see how much of a role Waugh actually had in building a team, but can't seem to find anyway to isolate this information outside of brute force going through every scorecard.

Ponting had an equal if not better team than England in 2005 and 2009 and lost both series. In 2010, England may have been a better team, but not to the extent of losing three tests by an innings at home.

Not sure how you can say this. The 2005 team were good on paper but were outplayed in a close fought series that could have gone either way. You can't blame Gilly's sudden declines/newly exposed weakness on Ponting. You can't blame McGrath tripping on a ball on Ponting. Similarly for 2009/10. If you can isolate certain instances or moments where Ponting's leadership cost his side a game and thus the series, then sure. But it's not as simple as blaming a captain. You have all sorts of coaches and support staff, and sometimes players just suck.

It's hard evaluating captains - going simply off their win/loss record is just the lazy way out IMO.

 

[jimmy101]

Is there any way to find out the list of players who debuted under a certain captain? I'm trying to look this up in order to see how much of a role Waugh actually had in building a team, but can't seem to find anyway to isolate this information outside of brute force going through every scorecard.

In the case of Waugh I think the list would appear something like this.

Adam Gilchrist
Scott Muller
Brett Lee
Simon Katich
Martin Love
Brad Williams
Nathan Bracken