Wednesday, September 21, 2005

Who should be captain?

Indian cricket is going through a rather rough patch right now. Part of it has to do with the captain coach controversy ongoing between Saurav Ganguly and Greg Chappel.
A lot of this has to do with the unique position a captain enjoys in cricket. In most other sports major decisions are left to the coach on the sidelines. These range from strategic decisions to team composition. Cricket up until now has been different since the captain has such an on field role in terms of bowling changes , field placements etc. However players with on field ear pieces being given instructions by the coach can remedy that. The arguments in favor of this are many. Why burden a singlre individual with so much responsibility when he is also responsible for his own play. Not every captain suffers a slump in personal form on taking over the captaincy mantel. But there are enough who do , to warrant this change. Maybe Hansie had it right along. This will allow each team to always present thier most balanced side rahter than worry about wether they were making a long term change each time they felt tempted to leave out the captain for a lack of form.

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