The year of Holder

[Bolo]

I really like Holder, especially as a person. His first hundred of course came when England were on the edge of victory against the Windies. For him to save the game by scoring a hundred (bearing in mind he'd never done that before) struck me as being the epitome of leadership.

I don't understand the idea of attributing a good individual performance to leadership. A quality individual performance speaks to individual quality in a discipline. I think the idea of a captain's knock stems from the tendency to give the captaincy to the best individuals.

 

[andmark]

I don't understand the idea of attributing a good individual performance to leadership. A quality individual performance speaks to individual quality in a discipline. I think the idea of a captain's knock stems from the tendency to give the captaincy to the best individuals.

Perhaps, but for him to perform abnormally well in a difficult situation to get a draw was surely good leadership. Bare in mind, when the selectors gave him the captaincy or even his spot in the side, they couldn't have been expecting many/any hundreds because he hadn't done it before. So it is surely good leadership to get to the milestone in the context of the match, even though he hadn't done it before.

 

[Slifer]

Well the West Indies need to take something out of a ten wicket defeat.

Holder has been in fine form. I hope he can keep it up and inspire a West Indies revival.

Well I take it as us losing to India just like all other teams have recently. Not happy about the surrender in the 2nd innings but nobody seriously expected anything less than a 2-0 shellacking from India.

 

[Slifer]

Great leader as well...but he needs to turn them guys into run making machines...

Not his fault. Get rid of dead weight Powell first and foremost. Then we can go from there.

 

[Daemon]

Holder's improving as a cricketer but boy is he a poor captain. Like an anti-Sammy.

He'll get better though, at least he's got the leadership part down.

 

[trundler]

I don't know but it seems almost all captains are pretty meh or downright poor currently. Sarfaraz is too negative and easily frustrated, Kohli keeps making bizarre selections, Root doesn't have much too him, could argue he's too negative also. Paine seems alright.

 

[SillyCowCorner1]

Asghar Afghan and Jason Holder are the two most inspiring captains in world cricket at the moment. Two sides of the same coin. On one hand, you have Afghan, who is basically maing up numbers: low production. On the other hand, you have Holder, makes the runs and takes the wickets.

 

[Bolo]

Perhaps, but for him to perform abnormally well in a difficult situation to get a draw was surely good leadership. Bare in mind, when the selectors gave him the captaincy or even his spot in the side, they couldn't have been expecting many/any hundreds because he hadn't done it before. So it is surely good leadership to get to the milestone in the context of the match, even though he hadn't done it before.

Sounds like Holder put in a clutch performance. It's no more or less clutch because he was captain.

A captain's role is to get the most out of their team. I guess you could include their own performances here, but it just seems odd to think of them leading themselves.

I wasn't talking about Holder specifically in my last sentence, but rather the general pattern. WI were in a bit of a slump when he became captain, with just about nobody sure of a place based on performances.

 

[andmark]

Sounds like Holder put in a clutch performance. It's no more or less clutch because he was captain.

A captain's role is to get the most out of their team. I guess you could include their own performances here, but it just seems odd to think of them leading themselves.

I wasn't talking about Holder specifically in my last sentence, but rather the general pattern. WI were in a bit of a slump when he became captain, with just about nobody sure of a place based on performances.

The leadership thing comes in when you think of how his team mates would've reacted to seeing that such a performance was possible and the probable result of him endearing himself to them more because of the innings. As far as generally speaking in terms of the idea of captains performances, you have a point that the captaincy is usually given to the best (or at least one of the best) player in the team, but unless the player is Don Bradman, scoring a hundred/taking a fivefer (spelling?) is not the usual occurrence. Yeah, such players are more likely than others to do such a performance, but the situations do it in (which earn the phrase) are usually tough and so there probably is something to the idea that leadership influences at least some of the cases.

 

[Bolo]

The leadership thing comes in when you think of how his team mates would've reacted to seeing that such a performance was possible and the probable result of him endearing himself to them more because of the innings. As far as generally speaking in terms of the idea of captains performances, you have a point that the captaincy is usually given to the best (or at least one of the best) player in the team, but unless the player is Don Bradman, scoring a hundred/taking a fivefer (spelling?) is not the usual occurrence. Yeah, such players are more likely than others to do such a performance, but the situations do it in (which earn the phrase) are usually tough and so there probably is something to the idea that leadership influences at least some of the cases.

Bats will take heart from watching another bat show conditions can be tamed. Makes sense. Not sure if it makes any difference if the other bat is the captain. logically it shouldn't, but I guess it might. Even if it does, the link between performance as a bat and leadership talent becomes tenuous on this train of thought, relying on both a logical inconsistency (that may not exist) and the captain's talent as a bat.

I think you are attributing a higher proportion of clutch performances to captains? This could be true, but shouldn't be regarded as self-evident. It might be true because they tend to be better players. Everyone tends to perform in easy conditions, but there does seem to be a tendency for the best to outperform when things are tougher. There might be some link between captaincy and being less carefree that makes this true as well. Everything in this paragraph is really speculative though. Im not sure how well facts would support anything here.

 

[andmark]

Bats will take heart from watching another bat show conditions can be tamed. Makes sense. Not sure if it makes any difference if the other bat is the captain. logically it shouldn't, but I guess it might. Even if it does, the link between performance as a bat and leadership talent becomes tenuous on this train of thought, relying on both a logical inconsistency (that may not exist) and the captain's talent as a bat.

I think you are attributing a higher proportion of clutch performances to captains? This could be true, but shouldn't be regarded as self-evident. It might be true because they tend to be better players. Everyone tends to perform in easy conditions, but there does seem to be a tendency for the best to outperform when things are tougher. There might be some link between captaincy and being less carefree that makes this true as well. Everything in this paragraph is really speculative though. Im not sure how well facts would support anything here.

I'm not sure I would attribute a higher proportion of clutch performances to captains, although it might be possible. Like you say in your last sentence, I'm not sure as to whether facts would support whether captains do it proportionately higher or otherwise. I'm not sure how anyone could even form a quantifiable methodology to test it given how a variety of circumstances would need to be included which would be qualitative evidence (I expect DaysofGrace will prove me wrong by the end of the month). We might be being a bit too semantic or need to be more semantic. If we could generate a fair defintion of "captain's performance", it might then be able to fully compare and contrast it with "clutch performances".

 

[Bolo]

If a captain's knock is not a clutch one or an above average one, what is it?

Looking at DoGs quality ranking later on could be an interesting exercise.

 

[Starfighter]

CW has become accustomed to pulling pointless stats out of its ass to support a point and have everyone nod along

In fairness to them any concocted stats have been fair game since '100 international hundreds'.

 

[andmark]

If a captain's knock is not a clutch one or an above average one, what is it?

Looking at DoGs quality ranking later on could be an interesting exercise.

I don't even know anymore haha. It's around about this time that I'd become a pedantic postmodernist and say (to paraphrase Alexander Wendt) captain's knocks are what we make of them. I'm just really confused now

 

[vcs]

In fairness to them any concocted stats have been fair game since '100 international hundreds'.

How is that a concocted stat?

 

[Starfighter]

How is that a concocted stat?

No one celebrated Murali's 1000th international wicket. You can't bung together different formats, because they're different. If you don't make the distinction you shouldn't bother with separate run or wicket tallies either.

 

[CricAddict]

No one celebrated Murali's 1000th international wicket. You can't bung together different formats, because they're different. If you don't make the distinction you shouldn't bother with separate run or wicket tallies either.

While I agree test cricket is ultimate, all formats are cricket, so I don't know why we can't bung them together? Murali's 1000th wicket also should have been celebrated imo. Shows the value of players who excel in all formats.

 

[vcs]

^ Agreed.

I'm sure there's plenty of "average in successful chases under the lights in the Southern Hemisphere" type pointless stats thrown around by commentators these days but this isn't one of them. Tendulkar is about as far ahead of the next best in international centuries as Bradman in average (though Kohli should get close). You may not rate longevity-based records much but that's still incredibly impressive.