The captaincy business

Test captains are born or manufactured or arrive by accident.

TED CORBETT

Test captains are born or manufactured or arrive by accident. Young Graeme Smith, as he will forever be known, was promoted — beyond his youthful capabilities if you listened to his critics — after the sacking of Shaun Pollock when South Africa's World Cup dreams died and found there were any number of bits and pieces he did not know.

Nor was there any iconic figure in South Africa who could teach him the ways of Test cricket. To be perfectly honest, from Kepler Wessels to Hansie Cronje, South African captains have not been too hot. So Smith had to go back to school so to speak. He went to the bookshops, the libraries and borrowed volumes by Mike Brearley, Mike Atherton and Steve Waugh; anyone who had a proven track record.

The world is holding its breath at the moment to see just how good young Smudger may turn out to be. The general feeling is that he may be very good indeed.

You can sense a good captain even across the ages, even if you come across a match in which you know none of the personalities.

Within a few minutes your eye is drawn to one figure on the field. He may not be waving his arms but he is still the centre of attention, the person to whom everyone defers.

He is the most important man in any cricket side even if it is full of fumble-fisted fielders, his bowlers cannot hit the pitch on a regular basis and double figures is the ambition of all his batsmen.

The best captains have always been eccentrics, the worst have been dullards and somewhere in the middle are many worthy cricketers with the laws, the rules of thumb and the lore of the game at their finger tips.

From old Richard Away in the curved bat days at Hambledon, by way of the charismatic Archie McLaren, 100 years ago, leading off his victorious men of England or Lancashire with his sweater thrown over his shoulders, to the energetic Adam Hollioake at Surrey today they have made their team perform mighty deeds.

They can be taciturn as Waugh, as regal as Viv Richards, as successful as Clive Lloyd; have magnetic personalities like Imran Khan or be as quiet as Mohammed Azharuddin; grumpy like Atherton and Allan Border; but captaincy needs character and the best have a surplus of that.

The best — Brearley, inspiring Ian Botham to legendary feats, Tony Greig towering above the opposition, Arjuna Ranatunga teaching his youngsters to defy the Aussie bully — take your eye immediately. Sometimes their deeds are hidden in the dressing room and their quiet words stay out on the field long after they have had their desired effect.

At the end of his long career, in his fifties and wishing he could continue for as long as he lived, Ray Illingworth, the best England captain of his era, told me that Len Hutton was supreme.

"When I were just making my way in the Yorkshire side, we played Gloucestershire at Harrogate and the ball turned square on the first morning. Hutton put me on after about five overs and I bowled out their openers and then he came up and said, `Thank you, Raymond, that'll be enough for now.'

"I was astonished. `I've got this lot on a bit of string, Leonard. I'll have 'em all out in a minute,' I said but he just shook his head. `No, I'll bring Brian Close on at this end and he'll get Tom Graveney out with his big turn and then you can come back and have the rest.'

"Well, it was just like he said. Closey got Graveney and then I bowled the rest out for less than 100."

Yorkshire never asked Hutton to be captain regularly even though he was leading England; they were too strongly wed to the tradition of an amateur captain. Imagine that. It was akin to being related to Bill Gates and paying a consultant for advice on running your business!

Hutton won back the Ashes in 1954-5 by asking Frank Tyson to bowl off his short run because he was fast enough to hurt Neil Har<147,2,1>vey seriously through his pad. He also saw that several of the Australians had huge backlifts; but his greater long term achievement was to turn Colin Cowdrey into a fully-accomplished Test batsman.

"I followed him round like a puppy," Cowdrey remembered years later. "I listened to every word he said, and tried to act on his wisdom. One evening he told me 'If you get in and make a big score, just concentrate on not giving your wicket away. Keep on totting up those runs.'

"The next day Len batted until just after tea for about 150 and then trotted down the wicket and lobbed the ball to midwicket. I was straight round to see him. 'You told me never to give my wicket away,' I said.

"He gave me an old-fashioned look. `No, lad, what I told you was do what I say, not what I do.'" It takes all sorts to make a world, of course.

Look at Nasser Hussain, the former England Test captain who can openly say that the skipper needs to create a little fear, and Michael Vaughan, the new England skipper, who rarely raises his voice above a whisper. Both, it seems, are equally effective.

But can a captain, by the strength of his personality, by the power of his temper, by his knowledge or experience or understanding, lead a poor side to glory, turn a mediocre team into a winning combination, or lead good players to disaster?

Oh, yes.

We will ignore the fact that Mike Gatting lost the England job only a few months after he had led his men to three triumphs in Australia in 1986-7 and to the World Cup final in 1987 and concentrate on his virtues.

I know him well. Still. He is a soft-spoken, "now-then-TC-what-can-you-tell-me-today", who enjoys a plateful of food or three, and who is clearly not a highly educated nor a sophisticated man.

Put Gatt in charge of a cricket team, a darts pair, or even another swimmer in a holiday pool and he takes charge as naturally as he breathes. Or eats.

For years with Middlesex he ruled a strong-minded, sometimes wilful, sometimes downright difficult bunch of professionals. I promise you that an average man would not want to wake every morning and think to himself that his duties that day included dealing with Phil Edmonds, a man who, to put it politely knew his own mind, or John Emburey, who would have been captain in place of Gatting but for an unauthorised trip to South Africa, or Cyril Radley, who had been playing since the beginning of time.

"He created a good atmosphere in the dressing room, never laid down hard and fast rules about curfews and drinking and consulted us all the time. You always felt part of the decision-making. I believe Brearley was much the same," says Angus Fraser who played under Gatting for most of a distinguished career.

Gatting also led the England team to Australia in the only winning Ashes tour for years. He made light of leading Ian Botham, who had been captain only a few years earlier, David Gower, a friend since their teens who had to hand over the reins a year earlier, as well as Bill Athey and Chris Broad, successful batsmen but men determined no-one would give them orders they did not respect.

I remember Gatting in Peshawar, leading a darts team against a set of locals. Graham Gooch had the darts and made the winning throw, but it was Gatting, calling the numbers, telling Gooch he knew that he was the man to win the game and what part of the board to aim for, who made the vital difference.

You can argue that many county sides in the days when professionals were referred to as "the servants of the club" and were left in a separate dressing room had no captain worth the name.

Their skipper might be the second cousin of the club chairman, a useful batsman in the Minor Counties and possessed of the social skills to make a speech, pay the bills and clear up the mess if his players misbehaved; but as to leading the side in the field that, along with discipline, nets, training and train times was left to the senior professional.

I like to think that could not happen now but that does not mean every captain is a tactical genius who inspires his players, has a degree in man management and a public relations skill that might win him a job at 10 Downing Street.

More likely he will be as instinctive as Clive Lloyd, the best of all the modern captains.

Lloyd melded players from several different island nations, controlled their enmity, their jealousies and increased their potential until they were the best combination in the world.

All he used was a gruff word or two and a loose hold on the reins. I saw him at the end of a long tour during an Oval net session where Joel Garner was reluctant to go in to bat.

"Come on, Bird," murmured Lloyd to one of the finest fast bowlers of any generation. "You didn't come here just to bowl a few overs."

Garner made a few runs in the Test. Simple, isn't it, this captaincy business.