What goes into captaincy?

Mike Brearley and Michael Vaughan are two great captains, both not outstanding players. Conversely, Sachin Tendulkar and Michael Hussey are examples of stupendous performers who have not proved to be the best captains.

Captaincy requires much more than being a great player, for that matter, even being a great cricket mind does not necessarily mean that that person will make a good captain. Strategy, tactics and most importantly man management are some important issues that go into captaincy. It is pretty evident that the greatest players are not the best captains, but there is another fact to be appreciated.

Sachin Tendulkar is as wily as a fox with the ball in his hand and is certainly has a good cricketing mind. So often it is noticed that he goes up to a bowler and talks to him and the bowler does something so unexpected the next ball only to pick up a wicket. But his captaincy record has been uninspiring and unsatisfactory.

A person like Sachin can often advice the captain on what to do at a particular time or in a particular situation out of sheer experience and cricketing knowledge. Although sometimes these points may be pertinent and very significant, only a good captain can implement these and keep coming up with such points over the period of a game.

All the coaches today advise and in fact insist that a player must not constantly focus on the game and let his mind waver a bit between balls so that the concentration and capacity to focus throughout the long duration of a match can be used to the optimum. It is only logical. It is important to efficiently exploit our resources. But this philosophy cannot be followed by the captain. It is between the balls that all his captaincy duties come into play. At other times, he has to focus on the game. Therefore, captaincy is extremely tiring and is a strenuous job.

Captaincy is not a cake-walk as Waugh, Fleming and Brearley made it out to be. It is, along with umpiring one of the toughest jobs in the cricketing circles.-BS