Busting the captaincy myth
Do players really lose form under the added responsibility?
ESPNcricinfo staff
22-Nov-2015
It is logical that captaining a Test team heaps lots of responsibility on a player. Subsequently, a lot of people assume that taking care of so many aspects of play will hinder his own output. But Chez Benton, in his blog, inspects if the numbers back up that theory.
I have heard it said that the England captaincy may carry peculiar pressures- perhaps due to the often slightly tempestuous relationship between players, media and fans in English sport. So one may wonder about the England captains of recent vintage in our sample. Of those only, Michael Vaughan (36.02 with captaincy vs 50.98 without) shows a big negative shift. Alastair Cook (49.94 vs 46.36), Andrew Strauss (40.76 vs 41.04) and Nasser Hussain (36.04 vs 38.10) all have pretty similar numbers for the two cases. Mike Atherton shows a slightly bigger shift but in the positive direction (40.58 vs 35.25)