Being an Indian born, I am, unsurprisingly, a cricket fan. And I couldn’t understand why Tendulkar was an unsuccessful captain in the 90s. It was the same mistake we all make – thinking that good players necessarily make good captains.
Being a good player is, no doubt, a prerequisite to be selected in the team in the first place but this doesn’t mean that the best player within the team should be made into the captain. In fact, logical would dictate that the best player might be quite less likely to be good captaincy material. Let me elaborate.
A good player is, by definition, really good at executing his/her playing role in the team, be it batting, bowling or fielding. A good player must have lots of natural talent for the task and must be devoting a lot of time practicing and honing the skills. This would (a) make him/her much more specialist of the specific task and (b) leave him/her with little time to hone any other skills. So, he/she will be less likely to succeed at captaincy which requires so many different types of skills. (This concept is not unique to leadership in cricket but in any and all activities in life – business, job, family, society, or politics)
A cricket captain has to be, first and foremost, a good cricket player, otherwise he/she won’t even make it into the team. Secondly, they have be a good cricket scholar, which is different than being a good cricketer (the former being good at the theory, the latter being good at practice). In essence, at the least, they have to have a thorough knowledge of the rules of cricket. And it’s not a trivial task to know them (MCC’s cricket rulebook is HUGE!). Thirdly, they have to be good leader which encompasses infinite number of things, like good people skills, knowledge of human psychology, inspiring personalities, and the boldness to decide on behalf of the team, to name a few. Then, they have to be good at strategy making and game theory. i.e. they have to have good grasp on how to maneuver their batters, bowlers or fielders, or measuring up an opponent by analyzing its strengths and weaknesses and also predicting their moves and gambits before, during and even after a game.
Apart from that, the captains have to be decently good at science and math. Taking the effect of rain into account not only requires some knowledge of meteorology but also the calculation skills of a human computer when dealing with those pesky DLS charts. (The South African team will concede me this point after their notorious mistake from the 2003 world cup. They lost a crucial match by 1 run because they had misunderstood the DLS calculations. As a direct result of this, they were eliminated in the group stage in a world cup (co-)hosted by themselves. That’s the not the only extent of the mathematics skills of the captain.)
He/she has to be good with timekeeping (or risk being fined for being behind the required over-rate). Also, they should be able to use the statistical data on an opponent or its players for preparing better strategy. The swing of old and new ball requires the captain to be at least narrowly familiar with the aerodynamics of the cricket ball. Also, the general physics of wind needs to be known too because wind speed and direction during the game can impact the fielding position and choice of bowlers.
Lastly, the captains have to be diplomatic in their media interaction – a balance between optimistic and realistic as well as between self-criticizing and being able to defend the team from flak.
This is just a simplistic picture of what a captain has to be. Surely, there are myriad other characteristics and skills that a cricket captain (or any leader for that matter) should possess. At this point, you might be saying that “But captains have a whole support staff for this – for statistical analysis, for strategizing etc.” and you are quite correct. Captains do benefit from coach(es), physios, nutrition advisors etc. but they still need to have enough knowledge of these different aspects to be able to understand what they are telling him/her. And of course, when on the field during a game, the captain is on his/her own and has to decide things on the spot.
With such a mixed bag of skills, it’s a wonder that captains don’t receive more recognition than they do (although, they do get to receive the trophies before the team and are photographed lifting and kissing them, or even sleeping while hugging them as in the case of Darren Sammy after West Indies’ win of T20 world cup 2016). Though, a bigger wonder is that many-a-captains manage to handle all these strenuous tasks without letting their individual performance suffer. Coming back to Tendulkar in the 90s though, the captaincy did massively affect his own performance which led to poor results for team India and which led to more pressure on Tendulkar the captain and Tendulkar the batter.
In summary, cricket captains, just like any leader in any other field of life, have to be polymaths – cricket player, cricket scholar, physicist, meteorologist, mathematician, statistician, psychologist, diplomat, game theorist, time-keeper, motivational speaker, … We sometimes forget that and only focus on their one bad decision or one genius move or their individual performance. We are furious with them when they slip at their job. It’s a tough job. Let’s cut them some slack.