Current Test Captains #6: Pakistan

This is an interesting case.  No country has chopped and changed its captains as frequently as Pakistan (even giants like Imran and Javed were trading the office every few years). The most recent roundabout included spells for Younis Ahmed (who then said no thanks), Shahid Afridi (1 test, then retirement), and Salman Butt (3 tests, then jail).  The wreckage of Pakistan's 2010 tour of England lead to the inspired call for Misbah-ul-Haq, not as the last man standing, but at the best man standing elsewhere.  He has served now for more than 3 years, missing only one game when Mohammad Hafeez stepped in.  Misbah has proved a revealation in the role, bringing stability to the office even as his age and technique are criticized. But the reality is he is almost 40 years old, and with Pakistan not scheduled to play any test cricket for another 9 months, the end cannot be far off.

The search for next captain of Pakistan will be closely watched. Mohammad Hafeez had the inside running, as test vice-captain and ODI captain, but he has fallen out of form and favor.  Promoting him now, when his place in the team is under question, is hardly the right way to start out, unless you actually want the captaincy merry-go-round to start again.  Its not ideal to be recalled to the team and instantly into the captaincy but some of the other experienced players in the team also have had form fluctuations so its hard to predict who might or might not get the next call.

Former captain Younis Ahmed is still in the team but at age 36 unlikely to want the job he has twice previously given up back now for his twilight years.  The next most senior player is Umar Gul but his recent spell of injury means he is also unlikely to be elevated either.  At various times any one of the Akmal brothers might be considered, but Umar, Kamran and Adnan all got chopped and changed as players, with  -- other than Adnan -- whispers of involvement in the scandals of the past. 
So with reasons to eliminate virtually every senior player, who does that leave?  The only players who seem certain of their places on the team sheet are Saeed Ajmal and Azhar Ali.  Ajmal might be a long shot, but he has no captaincy experience, and at age 36 his last days are coming too.  Azhar had a long run in the team and if I had written this a year ago I would have been confident in picking him as the next captain.  But he had a loss of form, and then got dropped.  He came back only for Pakistan's last game, in which he scared a 100 to help beat Sri Lanka, making suddenly everything OK with him again.  This is where the nine month break really hurts Pakistan:  if Azhar had a couple of series to re-imbed his place, then Misbah could transition out.  Absent games, the change could be sudden and therefore the choice unpredictable.

Is there anyone else from outside the team?  If Hafeez is not picked, Pakistan has no allrounder in its test team.  There'd be an outside argument for Shoaib Malik (age 32) to return almost four years after that last disastrous tour to England; and he's even done the job before, way back in 2007-08 amidst another period of in-fighting.   You can't say the same for Shahid Afridi (age 34, and having retired from the first-class game, while continuing to play limited overs matches).  Others outside the team who are captaining domestic games are Imran Farhat (age almost 32), and Kamran Akmal (age 32, and once the test vice-captain). I can make an outside argument for Farhat if he can find a rich run of form in the domestic circuit, but surely Akmal's game, record and baggage are enough to eliminate him from getting back to the test team?

A young player with captaincy experience is Khalid Latif; he hasn't had even a one-day game for Pakistan since 2010.   Mohammad Ayub (1 test cap) and Sarfraz Ahmed (getting some tests now Adnan Akmal is injured) are also captaining domestic teams, but both are as unlikely to get promoted as say Imran Nazir (age 32 and now 11 years removed from his last test) is to be recalled.  The list of contenders is awfully thin.

So all we know for sure is that Misbah will retire one day soon.   If Misbah can last just one more year in the test side, I'd pick Azhar Ali as the next captain.  If he doesn't, it could be literally anyone, but the chances are it's Hafeez until he no longer justifies his place in the team.

 

Current Test Captains #5: New Zealand

What a difference winning a few games makes.  Six months ago Brendon McCullum was under fire from almost all sides:  questions about his dodgy back, an uneasy reconciliation of Ross Taylor to the team, and a closely-associated national coach on shaky ground. All of these factors are still somewhat in play, but beating the West Indies in tests and taking them and India on in the shorter form of the game has given NZ a little more pride and a little less grounds for navel-gazing.  McCullum seems secure so long as his back holds up and he scores enough runs to justify his place in the team.  Who comes next?

The unprecedented nature of Ross Taylor’s ousting removes one potential and logical candidate. "Never" under Hesson as coach, of course, as firing Taylor as captain in the first place will probably be Hesson's mark in cricket history... so much so that perhaps the next coach will feel obligated to fire McCullum in order to get distance from the Hesson era. Even if the next coach has more confidence in Taylor's leadership ability, the nature of Taylor’s relationship to the rest of the team has changed; especially as it was the “bowler’s group” that was primarily complaining about Taylor’s captaincy in the first place. 

Kane Williamson has finally been settled on as vice-captain; the undertstandable hesitation in promoting someone so young and still finding his game caused by memories of Stephen Fleming’s struggles in the early year's of his captaincy when he was similarly left as the only candidate standing.  If McCullum does have to leave the office suddenly, one hopes that Williamson’s performance as a player is not a victim of the weight of the captaincy mantle.  

Truly no one else is there.  Tim Southee has filled in a senior pro but its as hard to see him as captain as it once was hard to see, say, Chris Cairns – both being leading and influential players but also injury candidates due to their workload in their respective eras.  Hesson has previously used Kyle Mills and proposed Nathan McCullum as stand-ins in shorter formats of the game but neither are likely to again play in tests. Peter Fulton gets to captain Canterbury from time to time but as he is about to turn 35 his chances of outlasting even the current captain are pretty slim.  

There are other Kiwis whose path seemed to have turned away from ever being their nation's captain.  Jesse Ryder may soon return to the test team but will likely be managed by team-mates rather than ever be a manager of them for the foreseeable future.  It looks increasingly unlikely that Dan Vettori will ever return to the side.  Even if he did Vettori has expressed no interest being a captain again.  Among the current first-class captains, Andrew Ellis (Cant) and Trevor Franklin are seen as ODI specialists for the national team, and Jamie How's (CD) and Gareth Hopkins' (Auck) test days are over. Neither Derek de Boorder (Otago) or Kieran Noema-Barnett (CD) feature in discussions for the team but perhaps their day will come.   

All this leaves only Daniel Flynn (ND) as an alternative from outside the current squad; he has recognized his easiest path* back would probably be as an opener  but his performance in this role is not exactly impressive.  (*Anyone wanting a middle-order spot would have to wait for the absence of more than two out of Williamson, Taylor, McCullum, Anderson, and Ryder, and arguably any of these are more likely to be named as a captain-in-succession).  Similarly Kruger Van Wyk is now a discarded international, who would need both Watling and Luke Ronchi to be out in order to return.

So long as McCullum's bat and his team does enough, his captaincy will continue.

Current Test Captains #4: West Indies

I was going to write my first postings for each country in alphabetical order, but everything about the current state of the West Indies captaincy screams that change is about to happen.  Each day I did not post my thoughts I’ve been wondering if it would be the day the trigger gets pulled.  Maybe even today…..

Team losing?  Check.  Captain in poor form? Check.  Team seemingly listless?  Check.  Current vice-captain doing better than most players on the team?  Check. Former, somewhat disgruntled skipper still around the team?  Check.  Captain in another format untouched by the test side’s debacles?  Check.  Rumblings of disunity? Check.

Darren Sammy is about to lose his job.  I have a huge amount of admiration for what he has taken on as captain of the West Indies, and for most of his tenure the team has at least kept a lid on the process of disintegration that has been going on for decades now. If he was still consistently worth his place in the team, I’d be hoping he continues.  But it’s obvious whenever the team picks – or wants to pick – two spinners in the eleven that he can’t carry the role of second seamer, and doesn’t justify promotion into the top-seven so another seamer can.  After the first test draw in New Zealand I had hope for him but since then the only contribution Sammy made was taking catches at slip.  That’s not enough, by far.  That the savior of that game – and only batsman who pulls his weight on the team – Darren Bravo, has scuttled home after a nets bust-up with Sammy, and the doyen of Caribbean cricket writers Tony Cozier immediately penned an article about disunity on the team only adds confirmation to what all the signs are pointing to. I do expect Sammy will resign, any day now, before he gets pushed.

There is a long list of possible leaders for the next test series.  I don’t expect the current vice-captain Dinesh Ramdin to be chosen, despite him leading Trinidad in the last four-day domestic competition.  While Ramdin got his share of runs in the latest test series, he has been a frustratingly inconsistent performer and is arguably not even the best keeper in the region.  The selectors won’t add the captaincy burden to him, and he will probably not begrudge it while he’s still fighting for a place on the team.

I also don’t expect the former captain Chris Gayle to return, although this is also a possibility.  Gayle has been plying his wares seemingly to all the 20-over leagues in the world, with his absence from the test line-up when it does clash with a league sometimes covered by flimsy injury excuses, almost like a test bowler who can no longer take the strain of the longer format (read:  Malinga).  I doubt Gayle actually wants to come back as captain, but the team still needs him as an opener and perhaps the way for the selectors to get B is to give A.  But my instincts are they have moved on from Gayle, just as they have moved on from another former captain, Sarwan (and Ganga before him).

But they may be cycling back around to yet another former-captain Dwayne Bravo.  The telling sign was Bravo taking the ODI captaincy, from Sammy, but with Sammy still in the team.  There might be space for two modest allrounders in the ODI format – actually there’s space for several more – but not in the test team.  If Sammy plays in the test team, just from the perspective of balance Bravo can’t and I think the reverse is also true.  Bravo may or may not be a better bowler than Sammy, but he’s definitely a better prospect than Sammy (or Ramdin) to hold down the number six spot as a batsman.  That allows the team to field two spinners, and still have three fast/seam options on the team.  Bravo’s first comments on landing in New Zealand were confirmation to me that he too knows what is up.  Until then, I thought Bravo was fully committed to the Gayle-trail of Twenty-20 games worldwide.  Now I think he’d be happy to come back to the team as test captain too. 

If not DJ Bravo who? The only settled batsmen recently have been his half-brother Darren, and Kirk Edwards (who captains Barbados) but both have had time out of the team recently.  Edwards is an outside shot if the selectors can’t reconcile to either Bravo or Gayle returning.   Marlon Samuels might have been a long-shot too but his latest sanction for throwing, and sudden loss of the golden batting form he was in, adds uncertainties to an already uncertain role.  Chanderpaul has side-lined himself from the job, saying he did not enjoy being captain before.   

I do expect Ramdin to continue as vice-captain under whoever comes as Sammy’s successor – this is often the role of a keeper in any team. None of the bowlers are stringing together more than a few tests at a time, and none can therefore be considered as a potential captain. Some of the other limited-overs specialists already play under the captaincy of Bravo so it would be a little bizarre for one to be elevated over him into the test team.  And among the four-day competition’s captains last season are lots of non-test players including Sebastian (Windwards), Corbin (CCC), Bernard (Jamaica), Joseph (Leewards), and Permaul (Guyana).  None are ready for the regional team’s leadership job, or even a place on the regional team.   

Test Cricket Captains #3: India

For a while it’s been hard to even conceive of an alternative to India’s current test captain, MS Dhoni.  Dhoni is arguably the best-performed captain in the world at present, perhaps the best captain in India’s history, and I would suggest he’s the best keeper-captain ever in the game.   To some degree his elevation to the role and great success in it was unexpected, but its ending is also now hard to envisage.

In the last few years the team has moved on from the era of middle-order giants who almost all had a time as captain too, but less predictably it has also moved on from both of its longstanding openers.  Virendra Sehwag was Dhoni’s test vice-captain, and Guatam Gambhir was elevated when Sehwag led in Dhoni’s occasional absence.  So with their return to the team appearing unlikely suddenly India was wondering who comes next – especially because Dhoni leads his country in all forms of the game, which is a rarity in world cricket these days. 

With so much riding on the choice, one can assume the selector’s appointment of vice-captain is a pretty sure sign of the future.  Vikram Kohli being named as deputy for the current tour to South Africa, therefore stands as the anointed successor.  He has also led at the under-19 level which is a good forecast for most Indian prospects.  Unlike most countries, when the Indian players return to domestic cricket they often come back in as captain of their respective teams as well.  It’s often seen as a routine design rather than as a sign of leadership ambitions. 

What alternatives are there to Kohli?  As the team’s best performed batsmen Cheteshwhar Pujara is the probably the next one to be tapped, if, say, Kohli suddenly lost form.  There have been more bowling captains from India’s past --- Bedi, Venkat, Kapil, Kumble within the last 40 years -- so one should also consider senior bowlers as candidates. India’s current platoon of spinners has been one of the keys to India’s recent success but as only one of Ashwin, Ojha and Jadega is likely to play in most tests outside the sub-continent, I thinks its unlikely one would be named as captain, unless he was clearly and undisputedly the number one spinner too.  As noted above two of great spin foursome of the 1960s and 70s were elevated at different times to India’s captaincy, but the eleven typically included three of that quartet both home and away, so one being captain did not create a forced-choice as the team’s spinner, too.

Al in all there’s no drama expected when the Dhoni era finally ends, because the big decision has already been made.  Kohli takes the chair, and his senior batsman Pujara comes next.