How the last three captains changed Indian cricket
In a country like India, where cricket is considered to be a religion, the standard of the national cricket team is often judged by the number of overseas victories registered under a said captain.
Captaining the national cricket team in India is not only a tricky job, but it’s a profile that is constantly put under the scanner. After a failure in an overseas series, while it’s fair to say that the team didn’t perform well but it all boils down to the type of strategies undertaken by the captain. If the team fails, it’s the captain of the side who bears the brunt of a series loss.
If you go by the recent record of Virat Kohli in South Africa and England, it will be quite difficult to find an error in his batting skills or the way he applied himself into his game. He scored centuries in both the countries but often has been at the centre of criticism for some reason or the other.
That’s how a captain is treated in India - If a team fails to deliver it’s the captain who needs to bear the brunt. His predecessor MS Dhoni is still considered as the unofficial captain of India who is expected to handhold Virat till the end of the World Cup 2019.
Over the last 2 decades, the baton of captaincy was handled by 3 prominent role models. Indian cricket still owes it to Sourav Ganguly, MS Dhoni and Virat Kohli for changing the dynamics of Indian cricket.
A change that was favourable to Indian cricket in many ways. In this article, we are going to see the leadership mantra followed by these legends, successes which made them heroes and some unforgettable failures which brought them back as stronger individuals.
#1 Sourav Ganguly – Back your team and take away the fear of failure
‘Dada’ as the team fondly addressed him was truly a captain of substance. Sourav Ganguly’s leadership mantra was simple, ‘Back your team and take away the fear of failure’. Yuvraj Singh on his first comeback to the Indian team once said, 'I’m ready to die for such a captain.’
During his tenure, the Indian batting line up in the test arena almost looked invincible with the likes of Fab Five (Virender Sehwag, Sachin Tendulkar, VVS Laxman, Rahul Dravid, and Sourav Ganguly) dominating the game for almost a decade. Taking the reins of the captaincy after a match-fixing scandal, Sourav Ganguly came a long way to script some of the memorable overseas Test victories, becoming the runner-up in the 2003 ICC World Cup and the snatching a nearly impossible victory at the finals of NatWest Trophy in 2002.
Following a tiff with then-coach Greg Chappel, Ganguly not only lost his captaincy to Rahul Dravid but was also dropped from the side. Post that, he worked on his game and came back stronger with stellar performances in India’s tour to South Africa and World Cup 2007.
A lot of times there had been comparisons between MS Dhoni and Sourav Ganguly over their leadership style and it only led to one conclusion – it’s said ‘Sourav Ganguly was the best captain of the Indian cricket team, while Dhoni was the captain of the best Indian cricket team.’