5 great players who did not prove to be good captains

Sachin Tendulkar

Cricket is a game where a lot of things depend on the captain of a side. In no other sport is a captain so influencing on the field. In cricket, a captain makes all the calls, decides the bowlers, sets the field and makes all the decisions. In short, a captain in cricket is the leader of the side.

If we look at the history of the game, there have been some great skippers like Ricky Ponting, Sourav Ganguly, Graeme Smith, MS Dhoni. They all had extraordinary leadership skills and took their teams to altogether new heights.

Captaincy in cricket demands a lot out of you mentally and physically and it’s not necessary if you are a great cricketer, then you’ll be a good captain as well. It was the case with many such cricketers who had outstanding cricketing skills but when they were asked to lead, they didn’t blossom as much.

Here are 5 such cricketers who could not prove to be good captains

#1 Sachin Tendulkar

It’s quite rare to see the great man’s name on a list that is talking about failures. But there couldn’t be a better example of a player having out of this world cricketing prowess and a poor captaincy record. Sachin Tendulkar is arguably the best batsman of all time having topped all the charts of batting records and having scored the unthinkable 100 international centuries.

But when it came to leading the side, his record is exactly opposite to his batting stats. Having led the Indian team in 25 Tests, he tasted victories on only 4 occasions and from 73 ODIs, team India won only 23 times under his leadership. He had 2 spells of captaincies and after poor results on both occasions, he ended up leaving the role both times.