The captaincy conundrum

[DesiChap]

From Prem P's blog excellent read.

The captaincy conundrum So Sachin Tendulkar declined the Test captaincy—a fact that appears to have triggered more national debate than the nuclear agreement, the Tehelka ‘sting’ and a few other relatively inconsequential issues. I wonder why? Firstly, SRT has been stung twice by the ‘honor’. On the first occasion, the selectors played games with him, with a couple overtly working against him. And during his second stint, it was the BCCI dispensation that played him like a fish, with the intent of shoe-horning the then disgraced Mohammad Azharuddin back into the team. Neither experience was calculated to create a desire in him for another encore; in fact, during an extended chat after the disastrous tour of Australia that he helmed, he told me as much in one of his rare moments of talking from the heart (in a sense, it was unfortunate that on that occasion, he insisted that the talk be entirely off record—a pity, because a wider airing of his thoughts at the time could have hopefully created a conducive climate for change). Add to that the fact that either stint at the helm was wildly successful—more times than not he attempted to carry an under-performing team, and ended up feeling much like a hamster on the wheel, running as fast as he could merely to maintain his personal equilibrium. Given this, why on earth would he want to let himself in for another innings at the top? Conventional wisdom is that he has in recent times politicked to just this end, and conventional wisdom could well be half-right as usual—about the politics perhaps, but likely not about the hoped-for end. What is more likely is that Dilip Vengsarkar had some ambitions in that direction—a perception that gains weight from current buzz that he assiduously campaigned with SRT to take up the job. So DBV’s ambition goes unfulfilled—is that occasion enough for national breast-beating? I notice that several people have put forward alternative candidates—spanning the spectrum from Anil Kumble and VVS Laxman through Sourav Ganguly. There was a time when both Anil and VVS deserved far greater consideration than they received—but to give the armband to either of them now is more in the nature of a consolation than of any carefully considered plan that keeps the future in mind. You could argue a case for giving it back to Sourav, while simultaneously identifying the next captain and installing him as the deputy—but the selectors’ recent actions militate against such a proceeding. Too often in the recent past, various anonymous voices from within the committee have leaked word that the former captain’s continued presence in the team is being debated with some heat, and there is no unanimity that he should continue. Whether there is a case for him to be persisted with is a point for a whole other debate —fact however is that his name is no longer automatically being penciled in through selectorial consensus. One of the more inspired leaks in recent times in fact suggested that when the team for the ODI series against Pakistan was being picked, the selectors contacted Dhoni and deputy Yuvraj, and both players were supposedly unhappy with Ganguly’s batting. How much truth there is in any of this is debatable—but again, the point is that the atmosphere has been considerably vitiated; do you really want to compound this confusion by having Dhoni report to Ganguly in Tests, and vice versa in ODIs? That leaves Mahindra Singh Dhoni as the only candidate in the field—and the argument most often voiced against him is that at this early stage of his development, when he is already ‘burdened’ with the ODI and T20 captaincies, he doesn’t need another high pressure assignment, especially when you consider that he will face Pakistan, Australia and South Africa in rapid succession. I have an alternate point of view, though. Firstly, the T20 captaincy is a negligible ‘burden’—per ICC fiat, a team will only play seven games in that format in a year. Against that, consider the pluses of giving him the captaincy—he came in raw to the T20 format, thought it through, led the team his way, and succeeded. That pushed him into the ODI captaincy slot, and here again he hasn’t exactly disgraced himself, not by a long chalk—to take two games off Australia, and to come within a stumble of squaring the series 3-3, is very creditable. More than the results, what is notable is the increasing confidence he brings to the job, and the signs that he thinks for himself, takes his own decisions, and is prepared to live and die by them. We have had one disastrous recent example of captaincy by consensus, during the World Cup, when a “seniors committee†was formed and entrusted with the collective responsibility of taking all major decisions; I am not sure we want to go down that route again. So you’ve got a guy who is strong, confident, assured, and by all available evidence, capable of handling the various outsize egos the team is infested with—and the only argument against that is being advanced is that he is inexperienced? Cool—that is something you grow out of, no? Seriously, wasn’t he even more experienced when you gave him the T20 captaincy? And surely the ideal introduction to the pressures of ODI captaincy is not a 6-game series against the reigning world champions, yet that is how Dhoni debuted at that level, and there was no indication that he was fazed by the challenge. What leads the punditry, led I notice by Ravi Shastri, to assume that leading in Tests will break him? And while on Ravi Shastri, this particular quote attributed to him had me sitting up in some disbelief:

As for India’s coach, he said it would not be wise to rush the process. “There is no need to rush things to get a coach. We need to pick the ideal person. We just can’t take anybody and make him the coach. And the team is winning, so why the tension? We’ll wait for the right time and the right man for the job.â€

Define ‘rush’? It is now six months and counting since the team had a coach, and last heard from we haven’t even begun the search in earnest. And this is no longer about ‘rush’ versus due deliberation—it is about paralysis. Also, I am not sure I follow that argument—we are winning right now, so let’s wait till we start to lose so the new coach who comes in can really earn his keep is what this means? I mean, seriously, what the heck is this all about? Happy Danteras everyone—for me, an early start to the Diwali season, hence off blog. Likely will drop by for a bit tomorrow when the game is on; see you then