SMOKERS’ CORNER: O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN!

Cricket is perhaps the only sport in which a captain does more than just play the game and wear an armband.

Apart from having good playing skills, he also has to demonstrate qualities of a political leader. If he fails, he is unceremoniously removed (or is ‘forced’ to resign). In cricket, it is the captain who draws the most attention because, with the kind of powers invested in him, he is more equal than others. 

The early exit of the Pakistan team from the 2025 Champions Trophy has accelerated the team’s slide in international rankings. Anger among Pakistani cricket fans had been brewing for quite a while. It erupted when the team was thrashed by ‘arch rivals’ India in the Champions Trophy. 

Indeed, the selection of the squad lacked logic and some players did all they could to actually substantiate the critique that they are highly overrated. The team isn’t sure what its purpose really is. A purpose for troubled sides often needs to be given a larger meaning.

Simon Lister, in his book Supercat — a biography of the former West Indian captain Clive Lloyd — quoted Lloyd as saying that, before he was made captain in 1974, the purpose of the West Indian teams was to simply entertain white teams and audiences. There was no urgency to win games.

In the 1970s, the Caribbean island-nations (that play together as the West Indies) witnessed serious political and economic turmoil. Black nationalist movements were also on the rise. In 1976, when the West Indian squad arrived in England for a Test series, the English captain Tony Grieg made a snide remark, which was taken as a racist slur by the West Indians. 

Cricket’s greatest captains have always harboured the ability to galvanise their teams when the odds seemed to be against them. Pakistan’s abysmal cricket team is, once again, in desperate need of such a leader

Lloyd turned this into an opportunity to fire up his team. The team’s purpose rapidly evolved. The purpose now became not only to win the series, but to do so with a vengeance. And that’s exactly what Lloyd’s team did, demolishing a strong English side.

Bolstering a cricketing purpose with black nationalism continued to drive West Indian cricket for more than a decade. Ironically, though, once the Caribbean island-nations began to enjoy political and economic stability, West Indian cricket began to slide. No captain after Lloyd, or his successor Viv Richards, has been able to instil any meaningful purpose beyond the now fading memory of past triumphs. West Indian cricket requires a new strong purpose to rebound. 

In the early 1980s, many top players began to retire from the Australian team. The quality and performance of Australian cricket plummeted. Allan Border was named captain in 1985 of a largely inexperienced side. After suffering a string of defeats, Border began to romanticise the tag of ‘underdogs’, while urging his players to play for ‘respect’.

In 1987, an ‘underdog’ Australian squad won that year’s World Cup. By the time Border retired in 1994, he had put Australia back on course to being a respected side. He was nicknamed “Grumpy” because of his ‘no nonsense’ style of captaincy, which went a long way in rebuilding the Australian team from directionless losers to self-respecting underdogs and, ultimately, to champions. 

These are but just a few examples of how some captains bolstered a cricketing purpose by giving it a wider meaning to energise their sides. To Pakistan’s first ever test captain, AH Kardar, the purpose of the team that he led from 1952 till 1958 was to play matches as if the country’s existence depended on them. 

In his autobiography, Memories of an All-Rounder, one can’t help but notice the importance that Kardar gave to this existential purpose. This was coming from the period’s fear that the country (formed in 1947) would not be able to resist being swallowed back into India. Kardar was an authoritarian character, but he was admired for the ways he pushed and motivated an underpaid bunch of players to win against more experienced and established sides.

Then there’s the rather interesting case of the Pakistani captain Mushtaq Muhammad, who weaved a strong purpose from a tussle he got into with the cricket board. Appointed as captain in 1976, he won his first two Tests. But when he insisted that the playing fee of the players be raised, the board, headed by the headstrong Kardar, refused. Kardar threatened to send a whole new squad to an upcoming twin tour of Australia and West Indies. 

The then prime minister Z.A. Bhutto intervened and asked Kardar to agree to Mushtaq’s demands. In his autobiography Inside Out, Mushtaq wrote that the board was sure the team would be thrashed by Australia and the West Indies, and that Kardar was waiting to have the last laugh. Hell-bent on proving the board wrong, Mushtaq turned this into a purpose and got full support from the team. Pakistan squared the series against Australia and lost narrowly to the West Indies. 

In 1982, when Imran Khan was made captain of a splintering team, he asked his players to “play to secure wins, not their places in the side.” Then, before a series against India, he quipped that the Kashmir issue should be sorted out by India and Pakistan on the cricket field. This was taken rather seriously by his team, and it played as if it were playing to win Kashmir. 

During the second half of the 1992 World Cup, Khan described his team as “cornered tigers” and, indeed, a demoralised team suddenly rose from the bottom, reached the final, and won it. 

Teams in a crisis often require a purpose with a lot of pathos, instilled by an authoritative captain, but one who is performing well as a player. 

Misbahul Haq was made captain in 2011 when the team was in shambles and Islamist terrorism was peaking in Pakistan. No international cricket was being played in the country. Misbah, a reflective person, laid out two core purposes. He told his players that, since all Pakistan matches were being played abroad, players were to always behave as if they were their country’s ambassadors.

Secondly, he insisted that the team’s aim was to produce results that would convince other teams to start touring Pakistan again. He had a calm but firm way of communicating with his players. The fact that his batting greatly improved, helped him in establishing the two purposes. Misbah became the country’s most successful Test captain and, in 2016, Pakistan topped the international Test rankings.

Pakistan once again needs a firm captain who can develop a strong purpose. The only purpose of most players at the moment seems to be scoring sponsorship gigs and lucrative T20 franchise deals.

Published in Dawn, EOS, March 9th, 2025

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