O captain, poor captain

Till the other day, Ricky Ponting was the finest captain in contemporary cricket, one who led by example, and got the best out of his players as captains are meant to. He was - not without reason - expected to be the link between generations, his own and the next, perhaps Michael Clark’s.

His Test record is impressive. Only five defeats in 46 Tests, and 33 victories, statistically the same as Steve Waugh’s.

And yet he is up against the oldest and most unfair rating in the game - when teams win, it is due to teamwork, team spirit and all those wonderful things, but when teams lose, it is the captain’s fault.

He was up against a leader who has a hundred percent record, having won both the Tests he has led in. A leader, who, has that single quality prized above all else by Abraham Lincoln - luck. Mahendra Singh Dhoni is younger, and less experienced, but he was lucky with the toss in Mohali, and that made the crucial difference.

The captaincy-team debate is rather like the driver-vehicle debate in Formula One. Can a great driver overcome the handicap of a poor car? Can a poor driver win a great car? Man for man, this Australian team is inferior to India, and the score at the halfway stage reflects this. Now is the time for great captains to come to the aid of the party. A team with Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath and Adam Gilchrist did not need particularly deft handling. But one with Cameron White, Peter Siddle and Brad Haddin does. At least till these players develop into the kind they have replaced.

A thought experiment: How would Dhoni have handled this Australian side playing against an Indian side led by the struggling Ponting? Would he have been able to inspire the strike bowler into embarrassing the batsmen rather than his captain? Would he have kept India’s famed middle order in check with his limited resources? Ponting would certainly have played the Australian bowlers better than he did Ishant Sharma in Mohali. If the captains exchanged teams, who would you put your money on?

The answer is so obvious it doesn’t bear repeating - yet within that answer lies the essence of captaincy. Captains can raise a team’s play only so much - Mike Brearley made his reputation in 1981 when he turned a 0-1 start by England (under Ian Botham) into a 3-1 series win. Tiger Pataudi, brought back to lead when he was long finished as a batsman, pulled level after India trailed West Indies 0-2 in a home series (before the visitors finally won 3-2 in 1974-75). These are two cases of captains changing the fortunes of an inferior team.

If the Delhi pitch for the third Test follows the curator’s instructions and turns out to be a turner, responding to Anil Kumble as it has done so often in the past, the toss will be all-important. If Australia bat first, they have the batsmen to run up a huge score, and that will act like an additional bowler putting pressure on the Indians. Ponting has gone on about his team’s new-age cricket, a claim that looks hollow now. But a small thing like an Indian rupee coin can still make him sound like a sage and restore his aura as captain.