I read this quote somewhere “A hundred sheep led by a lion will do better than a hundred lions led by a sheep.” This just highlights the importance of leadership in any field. Cricket is no different. It is one sport where leadership matters a lot. It can make or break a team’s fate. You may have all the best players but you need to be led by somebody with the ability to lead and motivate a side to glory. Many times, good leadership has been responsible for average teams doing very well. This just highlights the importance of captaincy in the game.
I got the idea of writing about leadership while I was watching Imran Khan being interviewed by Alan Wilkins on Star Cricket today. The channel has shown all the World Cup winning captains talking about their sides’ triumphs. All of them are extremely inspirational figures who had to get the best out of their players to win the title. Listening to Imran Khan talk about leadership was something really different. He spoke about the need for captains to lead by example by saying that "When a captain can show that he can do anything it rubs off on the others and has an even more motivating effect than any team talk." According to him if a captain just tells his team that they can win etc but doesn’t actually believe it or doesn’t show it in his body language then it doesn’t motivate anybody.
If you take look at all the captains that have won the World Cup you will see that all of them led by example. They put in at least one performance in the World Cup when the team needed it the most. However, I am not going to write about Clive Llyod’s West Indians and Ricky Ponting’s Australians who won the cup twice each as they were simply exceptional sides led by fantastic captains. These teams went into the World Cup as favorites and left it with the trophy but in the other five tournaments, the teams that weren’t favorites or weren’t expected to win emerged victorious.
1983 was when Kapil Dev’s Indian Team ranked 66 to 1 outsiders prior to the tournament went on to cause the biggest upset in a major tournament final. Kapil was the kind of a cricketer who could do anything. He is by far the best bowler India has ever produced. He said that his batting was always a bonus as he always considered himself a bowler. However, his batting was the one that instilled the belief in the team. His 175 not out showed the team that they could bounce back from any situation. When India got bowled out for 183 in the final, a commentator said “West Indies is showing India that inspiration is not enough to win the title.” Kapil had more to show in the final by taking the stunning catch to dismiss Richards and that is when the match turned. This just highlights Imran Khan’s point that a leader has to lead by example and should show it to the team that he can do anything.
We see this not only in 1983 but also in 1999 when Steve Waugh helped his team fight all odds to win the trophy. They were in danger of going home in the first round but came back to beat the West Indies to qualify. They were playing against South Africa in the last super six game and were looking down the barrel when Tugga came to the party. He stroked a magnificent 120 odd to seal the deal. This innings was against the best bowling attack going around at that time. Who can forget this game for “mate you just dropped the World Cup?” Still disputed whether he said it or not but as Steve Waugh said “Let us leave it at that, it sounds good.” This innings overshadowed his knock in the semi finals against the same opposition. According to me this one should be ranked somewhere along the previous one as it came in a semi final and when his team were tottering while setting a target. We all know what happened then.
Another thing Imran Khan spoke about in that interview was backing the players and believing in their ability to perform at anytime. He himself did that in 1992 when he backed youngsters like Inzamam and Amir Sohail to perform. They answered his call at the right stages of the tournament. Amir helped the side get back momentum with a crucial hundred against the Aussies and Inzamam played that brilliant knock against New Zealand in the semi finals. Inzamam was actually unwell a day before the game but Imran made it clear to him that he would play no matter what. The next day Inzamam went on to stoke a magnificent fifty to win the game for Pakistan from nowhere.
Arjuna Ranatunga was another captain who really backed his players in any situation. Everyone remembers him threatening to walk out when the umpire was continuously no-balling Murali for chucking. He also made some very important decisions as a captain going into the 1996 World Cup. He made Jayasuriya and Kaluwitharana open despite the fact that both of them had never opened before. As a leader he gave them the freedom to express themselves and assured them that they wouldn't be dropped if they failed. This not only led to their success in the tournament but it also revolutionized the concept of batting in the one day game. All the teams started exploiting the fielding restrictions only after this World Cup. I sometimes think had Ranatunga not thought of this, would we have powerplays today?
Craig McDermott said recently that the champion team of 1987 was dubbed as the worst team to come from Australia. How did they change that? They had a leader called Alan Border, who apart from being a great cricketer was a fantastic leader. He backed all his team mates and told them to play to their strengths. Under his leadership players like Boon, Marsh, Valletta etc. flourished. This was a major factor in their lifting the trophy. Not only did Alan Border bat but he also bowled to good effect. Mike Gatting was going strong in the final and looked like taking the game away from Australia but Border brought himself on and induced Gatting to play that fatal reverse sweep.
There are many other factors from the leaders’ side that helps their teams lift the trophy and I have made a small attempt at covering a few. Whenever I listen to these captains I feel inspired because not only did they get the trophy but got happiness to their respective nations. Being a captain of a sports team is one of the toughest job in the World as the fans can get hostile at times. The captains who are able to go above the fear of failure and are able to instill the same values in their players are the ones who are successful. Cricket is a team game but individual performances matter more than any other sport and this is what makes the captain’s role even more significant. Some captains who led their teams into the finals but were not able to win does not say that they didn’t lead well. Some great captains have lost World Cup finals like Mark Taylor, Graham Gooch, Clove Llyod and Sourav Ganguly but they had led their sides exceptionally well to the final. In final it takes that extra bit that differentiates the winners from the runners up.
All the captains in this World Cup have their task cut out. They need to inspire and perform to lead their sides to glory. With just five days remaining, this is all they must be thinking. May the best team with the best leader win.
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