5 anti-climactic endings to glittering captaincy tenures
The role of a captain is of greater significance in cricket than in any other sport. This is exactly why it is perhaps the most difficult task for any cricketer to even undertake during his career, let alone excel at it.The history of the game has seen numerous great captains that have emerged from different corners of the cricketing globe and won plenty of admiration for their outstanding leadership skills. But captaincy is a double-edged sword like no other, and even the best of captaincy stints have had finishes which one could not have imagined of during the glory days.One of India’s greatest skippers ever, MS Dhoni, is currently going through a similar predicament. India’s poor form in overseas Tests in the past few years culminated in his abrupt exit from the Test arena towards the end of 2014.Team India’s decline in the ODI format since the 2015 World Cup has been a growing concern and has reached its height in the recently concluded series against Australia, where they lost 4-1. With calls for Dhoni’s axing from limited-overs captaincy getting louder than ever, his glittering captaincy career may be heading towards an anti-climactic ending.Here are 5 iconic captains who suffered this fate:
#5 Andrew Strauss - England
One of England’s finest captain ever, Andrew Strauss, carried forward the good work that had been done by Michael Vaughan in his successful captaincy stint. English cricket was not in the best of states when he took over the reins from a struggling Andrew Flintoff post an Ashes whitewash in 2006/07.
Some of the greatest moments of Strauss’ stay at the helm of affairs for England included an Ashes victory in 2009 and 4-0 thrashing of India in 2011. He was, however, not as successful in the ODI format, the proof of it being a 27-33 win-loss record in 62 matches.
Strauss is the 2nd most successful Test captain in the history of England cricket with 24 wins from 50 games. But his tenure came to a heartbreaking end in the year 2012 with a 2-0 loss at the hands of South Africa at home.