Who is the greatest captain of the post-Packer era? That is a subject that is bound to cause arguments in bars around the world....
It all depends on how you measure success. The Australians have one way of doing it, and it seems as if their yardstick has been accepted by a number of cricket writers. The Australians calculate success as a percentage of Test wins over Test matches played.
By that yardstick, Steve Waugh is probably the most successful. But is that the best way to measure success?
The drainage of grounds are so much better now, so there is a much greater chance of a match being completed, as opposed to the 1970s, when the weather was often an integral part of the game plan. So, is it fair to compare the captaincy of the older Waugh with the rampart West Indians under Clive Lloyd and Viv Richards on that mathematical formula alone?
No matter how many Test wins Waugh racked up, his team never developed the aura of invincibility that the West Indians had in the 1980s. After all, India did come back from a Test down to beat Australia 2-1, thanks to that wonderful innings by VVS Laxman....
That never happened when Richards was captain!
So, maybe we need to look at successful captaincy differently....
If Captain A wins one series 4-0, and loses the next one 0-1, is he more successful than Captain B, who wins two successive series 2-1? According to the mathematical formula the Aussies use, he is!
Under Waugh's captaincy, the Australians won 13 series, drew three, and lost two. That is quite a formidable record! But how does that compare to Lloyd?
Big Clive captained the West Indies to 14 series wins, while drawing one, and losing two. Already, Lloyd has a better captaincy record than Waugh, when you look at the bigger picture....
Some say that Mark Taylor, Waugh's predecessor, was a better captain. And his record is quite good too. He won 11 series, drew none, and lost three series. Very good too, but not as good as Lloyd.
But, in debating how is the best captain in the post-Packer era, it would be remiss of us not to look at the record of the Master Blaster himself. Viv won seven series as a captain, drew four, and did not lose a single series!
That is what Caribbean fans wanted. They wanted their team to be invincible. And under Lloyd, and then Richards, they achieved that. Between 1979-80, when questionable umpiring helped New Zealand to win a Test series down under, and 1995, when Richie Richardson's men went down 2-1 at home to Taylor's Aussies, the West Indies never lost a Test series.
That is why it was such big news when the Windies did lose that series....
That to me is the true test of a successful captain. Invincibility! Both Lloyd and Richards are ranked ahead of both Waugh and Taylor on that count.
But who is the more successful, out of Lloyd and Richards?
You decide!
Wednesday, 31 October 2007
The greatest captain in recent times
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25 comments:
Hi Mikey, This is a fine topic and am sure will be much debated.
Earlier in the day, Styuart wanged me with an interpretation of stats I had never cared to look at. This is another one such....I never had this close a look at Sir Viv's record. Boy! Don't they look interesting?
And the parameters you use sound good to me.
The world does measure by series won; series lost would be an iappropriate criterion for a defensive skipper and play could end up with no losses; but I guess a combination of the two is a good indicator.
However there is no way to factor in the strength of a team at the command of the captain and situations from which captaincy helped in turning a series around...so we'll have to leave that alone even though a good captain for me is one who can extract the most out of his team of average/just above-average talent...like Stephen Fleming did or Allan Border did in the early days of his captaincy.
It's a close call between Waugh, Supercat and Taylor based on stats. Supercat and Taylor I'll rate a little ahead of Waugh.
Supercat built up a machine from a vision...from scratch, like Allan Border had to. Taylor too had a brief gestating period while Warne and McGrath came into their own.
But man, Sir Viv actually does come through quite nicely...he had lesser resources at his command when compared with the greater period of Supercat's captaincy.
Let's watch this post.
By the way, Imran too had his moments as a captain. I'm not just talking of win ratios here...it is the intangibles I'm referring to...Imran shepherded talented but raw youth in many ways...then he had that inner eye...the vision to pluck out people from the streets, so to speak, and build a team around them. In many ways he was a good captain too.
Its a very thought provoking post. How you compare captains is very subjective. Personally, I don't rate Viv as a particularly good captain. He was successful, but I feel it was largely due to his team rather than his leadership. However, it is hard to argue with success. Richie Benaud never lost a test series either - but was that a product of the times or his innate skill as a leader? Frank Worrell is remembered as a great captain, but his record wasn't actually that good.
Viv and Waugh both took winning teams and largely built on the previous captain's legacy. I rate both Clive Lloyd and Imran Khan above them, simply because they managed to lead their teams through inspiration and management. They both brought together a disparate group of individuals and moulded them into winning lineups. For me, that is true leadership and captaincy.
I don't remember viv richards was a good captain, and i never really rated Steve waugh either. I think the two best captains i have seen are taylor and fleming, because both of them created victories with captaincy .
Who is a 'captain'?
One who manages or one who leads?
If it is to manage, I would rate any Pakistan, Indian or the new crop of Zimbabwe captains, over any other worthies.
Obviously, Brearly,Fleming and Jardine are up among the greats in this category.
OK, this is going to go against the grain. But I don't rate Mike Brearly as a great captain (unless luck and timing are a sign of greatness).
Mike
If you go by results alone then may be yes Viv was the better captain. However there is big difference in Lloyd achieved and what Viv managed. Lloyed turned a good unit into an invincible one. Viv managed the invincible unit well. Lloyed took his team one step up and Viv kept it there. Lloyd to me was a better captain than Viv.
Stuart,
Perhaps I should have explained.
Pakistan,Indian and now Zimbabawe captains, have to contend with a lot of things other than cricket.
So to manage a team and make them play unitedly needs skill.
Similarly,Fleming,Brearly and Jardine had just one world class player and they had to build their game around him.
BTW, mine was a rhetorical question, I myself dont know the answer.
The question clearly asks to compare captains in the post packer era thus brearly and Jardin are out of the running. Plus u can't include Lloyd from the pre packer era but he did enough captaincy in the post packer era to be considered.
I agree that Viv inherited the might windies side that Lloyd had created but the same is not true for Steve Waugh. Under Mark Taylor, Australia were a very good side on their way up. When Waugh took over, he turned them into the ruthless force they are today. Waugh won a world cup, something Taylor didnt manage and Waugh got clean sweeps and series wins without losing tests, which again Taylor did not manage.
Steve Waugh ranks right up there as one of the best captains ever. He had all great leadership qualities along with a great cricket mind. He managed the team well too, remember, he never got along with his own VC Shane Warne. It is Ponting who inherited the ruthless team.
Imran Khan was one of the best captains of this era. He managed one of the most erratic set of players and brought the best out of them. Moreover, he set example, led from the front, was a great motivator, and didn't budge from what he thought was right. His eye for the right talent, althought not a required trait for captaincy, just enhanced his quality as a captain.
I rate Saurav Ganguly very highly as well. He put his faith in a set of players, led them well, and got the best out of them. All these players in the team - Yuvraj, Harbajhan, Zaheer Khan were groomed under him. He did what no other international captain in the last decade has done - beat Australia in a test series and held them to a draw in another. He also did what no other Indian captain has ever done - beat Pakistan in a test series in Pakistan.
He took the team to a world cup final. Under him India also reached many ODI finals, didnt win many but that still counts for a lot.
Definitely one of the best Indian captains, and one of the best in the world too.
My blog's a shameless Steve Waugh fan but if its bringing a team from Point A to Point B then Arjuna Ranatunga simply has to enter any discussion ...
Some very interesting comments, guys....
I'm a great fan of Clive Lloyd, as you probably gathered! However, I do accept the arguments of the supporters of Viv Richards.
1) Viv's team was weaker than Lloyd's. Holding, Garner, and Roberts all retired, and though Walsh and Ambrose were good, the Windies became mainly a two-man pace attack, as opposed to a four-man pace attack. The ever-dependable Gomes retired, and Logie was not able to fill his boots.
2) Viv drew a series in New Zealand. A difficult undertaking at the time!
3) Viv's style was different from Lloyd. He led from the front, by force of personality. yes, there were times when he rubbed people the wrong way, but he was good for the West Indies.
Just playing devil's advocate, guys!
How did I miss out Ranatunga and Saurav? Yes, they too were pretty good captains. The term post-Packer era is slightly misleading when it comes to Supercat because the team he brought back from Kerry Packer was one he had helped set up. So in a sense it was a continuing endeavor for him.
I wonder why Border isn't mentioned. He was one captain who actually fits the post-Packer description for he had to rebuild the team entirely, even after the Packer circus ended.
I think it has to be AB. The reason why I go for him is he took the reins in the times when the Aussies were on the lower rung of the Test cricket after the greats had a mass exodus in early 80s.
Not only he handpicked players like Waugh, Marsh, Boon, Moody, Mathhews, McDie, Hughes etc, but he turned the Aussies to world beaters. The enviable record the post AB captains have is credited to his hard work. By the end of the 1980s the Aussies had started to look the invincibles when they first regained the Ashes and then started beating West Indies regularly.
When AB bowed out, he had already converted a low profile Aussie team to a match winning one in 1994. Even though Australia lost players, they never retracted back on the road to the greatness.
McDie gave way to McGrath, Warney, Waugh brothers, Gilchrist, Healy, Tubby Taylor and others were ready to don the flag bearership of the Aussies in the years to come.
THough there were some other good captains too like Tubby Taylor, Tugga Waugh, Punter Ponting, Ganguly, Imran Khan and The Big Cat, but they had more success cos of their teams and not for their leadership skills.
Greatest Indian captain if it is at all for debate, then no doubt Saurav Ganguly.
Tubby, I feel the same way about Border. He had to re-build a team from scratch and go on from there. Also, he led by personal example, which I feel is important in a capain. This is in reference to say a Mike Brearly.
Saurav is undoubtedly India's best.
Inspired by the subject of this blog, I have posted 'Part 1' of a blog titled 'The greatest cricket captain of the last 4 decaded'. I thought of some criteria which should be used to determine the best captain of these times. Check it out on:
http://www.wellpitched.com/labels/Q.html
I have referenced this blog as well.
Good one but a topic that will ultimately remain inconclusive. If determining the greatest captain is a matter of slicing and dicing the win-loss, whether matches, "live matches" or series, that will only determine the "winningest" captai nnot necessarily the greatest. Also greatest has elements of longetivity, team evolution, ability to inspire and raise the team's game and such associated with it; not all which can be measured. At least not in a uniform way. Best to compile a list of captains under different categories.
I hadn't thought of AB....
To be honest, I wasn't looking for the best captain, because that is hard to measure. So many variables come into the scheme of things, such as the quality of the team at your disposal, etc.
I thought I would focus on success. And I was measuring how successful you are by the number of series you won, drew, or lost.
What was Border's record as a captain?
My memory of him is clouded by the way his team caved in to lose a home series they should've won against Richie Richardson's men....
I've been thinking about this and just visited Q's blog to read the articlke there. Some of my views are growing along and some are becoming clearer. Talking solely about the intangibles...the aspects of captaincy we cannot quantify...here are some of the views I expressed there. I think they are relevant enough to join up with this debate.
The intangibles are blazingly obvious to cricket followers but are difficult to quantify and incorporate into stats. They also have to bear the cross of subjectivity. Yet we must talk about them alongwith bare stats.
I have been thinking about this as the views began to come in. You may be aware from my responses that I rate AB, Clive, Imran,Ranatunga and Ganguly as some of the recent best captains. They were instrumental in not just re-building teams but also led by example....of course, as regards personal performances, some did better than others.
But I've been thinking on. What happened to the teams these people built up after them? What did others do with the same personnel afterwards, and in some cases (like Ganguly and Ranatunga)before them?
The answers to the above questions would also add a new light to the captaincy debate.
Most teams dipped after the respective captains' tenure came to an end. They dipped in performance and stats. (Dravid is perhaps a minor exception here)
But the Australian teams since AB grew from strength to strength. This is another of that intangibles that must be considered - the ability to maintain/carry forward an organisation is also an intangible that I feel must be factored.
It is here that Taylor, Waugh and Ricky step forward (and as I mentioned, Dravid too in his brief stint). To carry forward a team carefully built up and nurtured isn't easyeither. Not many have been able to do this successfully. The Aussie trio managed to do that rather well. We can see that from the figures (which you so kindly put up for us) as well as by watching the teams evolve themselves.
The careful change of personnel when needed and the difficult art of taking over a team perhaps loyal/accustomed to, to the predecessor, isn't always easy or workable. This may be where the intangibles actually help Ricky, Waugh and Taylor.
I chose to focus on another aspect of the subjective but instinctive image we form of a captain. I'm sure as you post the succeeding parts of this article, my thoughts would also evolve alongside! Cheers!
Link to first of Q's series of articles on captaincy and captains.
It's worth a read and participation in.
Thanks for visiting my blog soulberry. I intend to continue my parts to the debate as i mention in the blog. I have responded with my opinion regarding AB, and I just feel that too much credit is being given to him for turning around the fortunes of Australian cricket. I believe it was 'Cricket Australia' then known as the ACB that had the major part to play in Australia's turn around.
Sure AB captained a team and took them from a weak side to ODI champs to a good test team but it were the policies that ACB had implemented and the restrucring they had done to their board and domestic cricket that ensured a successful future for Aussie cricket. The results of that ACB strategy are still paying off today.
Read more on this in my comments at the above link given by Berry :-)
Hi guys...I have posted part 2 of my post on best captain of the last 40 years - pls read it here: http://www.wellpitched.com/2007/11/greatest-cricket-captain-of-last-4_11.html
Just heading over to the article Q.
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