The kerfuffle over the Indian captaincy could have been avoided had the Board of Control for Cricket in India acted with grace and kept everybody in the loop. When such things happened in the past there was usually a cry for having a cricketer at the head of the administration. Now we have one, and that does not seem to have made a difference.
As things stand, an injured Rohit Sharma will not be available to play the Tests in South Africa under Virat Kohli, while the latter, for “personal reasons” will not be available to play the One-Day Internationals under Rohit Sharma. At the time of writing, there is official word on Rohit’s withdrawal, none on Kohli’s. We’ll leave it there, and move on to the bigger issue of the captaincy itself.
How important is the captain? Traditionally, cricket was the one sport where the man leading had the most crucial role to play; in other sports, the coach called the shots.
School of thought
There was always a school of thought which held that any senior player should be able to lead a side especially in a Test match, and that the captaincy was invested with unnecessary importance. In touring Indian teams of the past, the captain was entitled to a single room while the others shared theirs, but today everybody gets a single room. Captains do tend to attract more contracts for endorsing products, though.
Today’s captain is not just the head of the playing eleven but thanks to the support staff is the leader of a committee that is constantly feeding him with information, numerical, graphic and analytical. He makes the final decision but has enormous data at his disposal.
So once again that old question: when it is captaincy by committee, do we need to look for special qualities in an experienced player that trumps the data?
It is possible for a captain to do everything right and still lose a match. Sheer luck can sometimes overcome tactical nous. Give me generals who are lucky, as Napoleon said.
You cannot decide how good a captain is based on his success rate alone, but that is the only metric we have. Yet what of things that didn’t happen — a bowling change not made, a fielder not moved in time? These things might turn out to be crucial. What might have been ought to be considered for a rounded assessment. But that of course is impossible. Judgement is based on what did happen, although captains are often praised or criticised for what they didn’t do but should have done.
Access to same information
So what do we mean when we say someone is a good captain? Is Ajinkya Rahane a better captain than Kohli because he won two Tests, and the series in Australia? Both captains had access to the same information churned out by the support staff, each knew the opposition as well as the other did. Or do we conclude that Rahane had the luck to carry forward the system that Kohli had put in place? A system that works, as Kohli showed in England later?
Is winning the most important thing for a captain, or is it creating a system that leads to wins? This latter would involve picking the right players, deciding early who is worth persevering with and who not, tweaking the team’s approach and priming it for victory. Two captains in India who did exactly that have been justly celebrated. Tiger Pataudi, and V Subramanyam. The former prepared the team that his successor Ajit Wadekar led to series win in the West Indies and England, while the latter built the Karnataka team that, under Erapalli Prasanna, toppled Mumbai and went on to win the Ranji Trophy.
Would Subramanyam have been able to replicate his success had he led India? He did play nine Tests, but despite tours to England, Australia and New Zealand was not a regular, and in any case Pataudi was already in charge. Subramanyam was a hard-hitting batsman who once clean bowled Geoff Boycott in a Test, but never did get a chance to put in action for India the theories that had worked so well for Karnataka.
It shouldn’t matter who leads India, except perhaps in the shorter formats where decisions have to be made quickly and the data translated into outcomes.
The selectors might have decided that having three international captains might be — in BCCI President Sourav Ganguly’s words — “too much leadership”. A decade back England had three — Stuart Broad (T20I), Eoin Morgan (ODI) and Alastair Cook (Test), so it is not unheard of.
There is no need for India to copy that of course. In any case, Rohit appears to be the better white ball captain while Kohli has put his stamp on Test cricket. Objectively, therefore, this is the best deal for India.
