Managed to watch 10 minutes of cricket this morning. And it got me thinking. There are a lot of ex-captains in the Indian team. For sure I have seen Tendulkar, Ganguly, Dravid, Sehwag and Dhoni each lead the team on different occasions. For all I know Laxman may have led a Test somewhere, but I can’t recall him as captain, only as vice-captain. And I can rule out Jaffer, Pathan, Sharma and RP Singh.
So the current Indian team would appear to have Kumble as captain, and no less than five ex-captains in the team. I tried to check the web out for further information on this subject; cricinfo, for once, was less than helpful. The best I could find was this BBC Sport 2002 reference, where Bill Frindall seems to believe the record was then 3.
Any views? Surely 5 is the new record?
JP,
I did a quick search on cricinfo, based on the Indian team and matches between 1990 to today and it listed the following as Captains:
M Azharuddin
R Dravid
SC Ganguly
A Kumble
V Sehwag
SR Tendulkar
So that would make Kumble + 4 ex-captains.
MS Dhoni (currency VC) doesn’t appear to have Captianed a game but i am sure he has been incharge when the boss has gone off the field for an over or two.
With nearly 350 to get on a dry WACA pitch India looks to be in the box seat, but with a record 17 wins to get I wouldn’t rule out Australia yet.
Cheers,
Nigel
@ Nigel: Dhoni captained the winning Indian side in the 20-20 World Cup recently so I am sure he counts as one of them. :-)
@ JP: What is admirable that so many who have held this ‘leadership’ role in the past are happy to be led by another leader rather than throwing some kind of strop. Some businesspeople could certainly learn from this – the important thing is to play, play fair and win.
JP: Seems India has done it earlier.
See India’s 1992 tour to Australia : http://www.cricinfo.com/database/ARCHIVE/1991-92/IND_IN_AUS/IND_AUS_T5_01-05FEB1992.html
This team had Srikkanth, Vengsarkar, Azharuddin (the present Captain) and Kapil Dev. Ravi Shastri was part of the team and played in the other test matches: http://content-www.cricinfo.com/australia/engine/match/63565.html (seems to have missed this one).
This makes 4 ex-Test Captains in the team playing under a Captain.
@Shefaly aha I limited my search to just tests which would explain my I missed Dhoni.
Your point about being led by another leader is valid. The conventional wisdom is business is for the ex-leader to get out the way.
It looks like we have had FOUR ex-captains twice, once in 1992 and once now. Wikipedia proved very useful, listing all the Indian cricket captains in chronological order.
I can’t count Dhoni, Test records are Test records and must stay separate.
It’s worth mentioning that Tendulkar is the only person to have played in both series.
I remember thinking about an England team in the 80s that had 9 or 10 county captains. That was fairly unusual.