Is there a statistical way to determine a good captain?

[subshakerz]

Many posters like to resort to using the old win/loss ratios to determine a captain's standing. I consider such a measure to be so contextual to the team's ability and opposition and where they play that it doesn't tell us much about captaincy quality.

Instead, I prefer looking at the most basic measure of whether the team's performance improves to determine a good captain. One way is to look at how the team progresses up in their global ranking during the captain's tenure.

The ranking can be divided into the following tiers:
No.1 - top ranking
Top tier - ranking between 1-3
Middle tier - ranking between 4-6
Bottom tier - worst of the worst

The basic criteria then for a good captain then is based on moving up to a tier above. Most captains with some sort of reputation have seen the team move up in the rankings in their time.

Graeme Smith, Kohli, Williamson took their teams from middle tier to No.1.

Imran Khan, Misbah, Vaughn took their teams from middle tier to top tier.

Ranatunga and Nasser Hussain took their teams from bottom tier to middle tier.

The case of Australian captains is interesting. Border took his team from top tier to bottom tier before steadily taking them to top tier again. Taylor took them from top tier to no.1, and Waugh kept them as no.1. Ponting took them from no.1 down to middle tier by the time he gave up the captaincy after losing the Ashes in 2010, which is one of the reasons I don't fancy Ponting as captain as highly as he couldnt sustain them in top tier even after the big reitrements.

Of course, tier progression is just one among several factors to determine captain quality. Beyond that, you need to look at other factors such as inspiration, tactics, etc. to know exactly how good they are.

 

[ataraxia]

No

 

[StephenZA]

There’s a statistical way to do anything, whether it has merit is another thing...

 

[Starfighter]

Not really.

 

[Red_Ink_Squid]

Win% in their first 4 Tests.

 

[GIMH]

Average runs total of their team in the 4th innings

 

[Adders]

Yeah, winning 4 from 4.......that'll do it.

 

[honestbharani]

There is no statistical way to determine even the best batsman or bowler and they have more performance pertinent stats than captaincy.

 

[cnerd123]

I'm sure CricViz or someone will come up with a way of predicting the 'expected performance' of a team for a series/tournament based on past data, and then if a team out-performs that it may loosely be attributed to the captain and coach's influence.

But realistically there are just too many factors at play.

 

[Uppercut]

I think captaincy quality is fairly observable on a subjective level. I say this because commentators are noticeably reluctant to talk about it. They'll acknowledge that the excellent captains are excellent, so they clearly think it's observable. But that's as far as they'll go. Maybe it feels a bit too personal to say Player X isn't doing a good job of captaincy.

Any attempt to quantify it would be terrible. It would be interesting to see the number of possible wickets missed by failing to use DRS though.

 

[trundler]

In theory you could quantify how often a team should've won going into a test and compare this expected win percentage to actual wins but there's 3 problems with this:
It's based on the premise that a good captain necessarily makes his team perform better than they should.
Expected win percentage would be pretty dicey to calculate.
Choking, loss of form, specific match ups etc and generally just say too many confounding factors.

 

[SillyCowCorner1]

This metric is as special as Andy Ganteaume’s test average

 

[mr_mister]

Ashes won/retained

 

[smash84]

Is there a statistical way to determine a good captain?

There may be many ways to determine that, but a lot of them will probably end up in the "another meaningless cricket statistic" thread.

 

[Pap Finn Keighl]

First of All, only very few players gets the chance.. Mostly top batsmen. There is not much competition.
For example If Sachin clicks as captain, he is the captain for next 10 years.. Thats a generation.( Kumble, Ganguly.. Etc will retire as ordinary players ).. A successful captain need not to be the best captaincy material even in his own team.
And i dont think captains can make huge difference in team's performances.. It is mainly based on team strength.

Check 00s Australian ODI team, 10 or more Australian players from that period featured in alltime CW top 50. ( in comparison, only 4 Indian players featured in the list overall )
Whoever be the captain, that team will perform.. Because that was a stronger team than most country's alltime 11s. Ponting was just lucky to get that team.

Dhoni was an extra ordinary captain IMO, but its not like he is competing against 100s of captains to attain that position.. Only 7-8 major teams and captains.. He was one of the best among 7-8.

 

[Line and Length]

How would Mike Brearley be seen in the scheme of things?

 

[Starfighter]

How would Mike Brearley be seen in the scheme of things?

Good example of that being a perceived as a good captain has a lot of luck - never captained a series against the West Indies.

 

[mr_mister]

How would Mike Brearley be seen in the scheme of things?

Specialist captain

 

[wpdavid]

Good example of that being a perceived as a good captain has a lot of luck - never captained a series against the West Indies.

Exactly. And he led England against a lot of teams weakened by Packer too. But, iirc, he took England to number 1 in the rankings after the 1978/9 Ashes, so the theory in the OP would rate him very highly.

 

[subshakerz]

Exactly. And he led England against a lot of teams weakened by Packer too. But, iirc, he took England to number 1 in the rankings after the 1978/9 Ashes, so the theory in the OP would rate him very highly.

When he captained against a full strength Aussie side in 79/80 he was whitewashed.