Cricket captain

“ The captain creates the moral atmosphere of his side. If he is slack and indifferent, so are the other ten; if he is keen and enthusiastic, so are they. Unconsciously the side as a whole assumes the captain's attitude towards cricket and towards a particular cricket-match. So his duties in the field involve a good deal besides the actual management of bowling and arrangement of fieldsmen. If his side is to play the game in the right spirit, and in the spirit that wins matches, he must be kind, cheerful, and enthusiastic, and must always try his very best. ”

“ A watchful captain can at times greatly help his side; a shout of 'steady' when a young batsman appears to be getting rash in his play, or when two players are getting a little abroad as to running, often comes with great effect and authority from a captain, and may prevent such a catastrophe as that represented in the illustration opposite. A word of encouragement to a nervous player as he leaves the pavilion may also often be of service. On no account should a captain ever abuse a batsman, no matter what rash stroke or foolish lack of judgment has cost him his wicket. ”

“ He may be the oldest and most experienced member of the team, or perhaps from his position as a cricketer it may be out of the question to pass him over, and then, of course, the best of a bad job must be made. But a captain who is also a bowler has much heavier responsibilities in the field than one who is not. Even if he happens not to be over-anxious about trundling all day himself, he is apt from shyness and diffidence of his own merits not to put himself on at all—another extreme into which some captains before now have fallen. ”

“ Few professional cricketers (it is a well-known fact) make good captains; we have hardly ever seen a match pbyed, where a professional cricketer was captain of either side, in which he was not guilty of some very palpable blunders. Take the Gentlemen v. Players matches, at Lord's and the Oval, for the last twenty years; the Players have always been seriously handicapped by the want of a good captain. Bowlers are kept on maiden after maiden without the faintest chance of a wicket, no originality of attack is ever attempted and altogether the captaincy is usually bad. ”

“ A good captain tries to identify himself so completely with his side, as a whole and in all its parts, that he fields with every fieldsman and bowls every ball with his bowlers. He is, in truth, the soul of his side. ”

“ No one can fulfil them adequately without being a good man and a good cricketer—a good cricketer not so much in the sense of being able to do great feats with bat and ball, as in that of having a thorough knowledge of the game and a proper feeling towards it. A captain, too, should be a judge of nature as well as of cricket, for he has to deal with men as well as with the game. ”

“ There is nothing so annoying to a keen cricketer as to see the field waiting three or four minutes whilst some 'local swell' calmly buckles his pads and saunters sleepily to the wicket. A captain should see that the next batsman is always ready to go in directly the preceding one reaches the pavilion; and a good experienced captain can also give many valuable hints to the younger members of his team as they sit waiting for their innings. ”

“ Above all, he must lead and not be led; otherwise he is no captain at all, but a figurehead.
That the post is no sinecure may readily be understood. It involves much responsibility and many cares and annoyances. When things go well people take it as a matter of course; when they go badly the captain is the butt of all criticism: one hears it said so often during a cricket season that this or that match was lost by bad captaincy, but very seldom that a match was won by good captaincy. To a certain extent this is in accordance with facts, for bad captains are as common as good ones are rare. ”

“ If a man is a good judge of cricket, and can cultivate the faculty of regarding himself and his own cricket dispassionately, there is no reason why he should not be both a bowler and a good captain. In some ways it may be an advantage for a captain to be a bowler, because the fact that he has a practical knowledge of the art of bowling is likely to give him in a fuller degree that theoretical knowledge which is necessary as alone providing many of the principles for the management of bowling. ”

“ There is a vast difference in principle between getting out on purpose in order to win and bowling and fielding badly in order to snatch victory from the best side. A captain is, then, not only perfectly justified, but is bound in the interests of his side, and in the true interests of the game, to order his men to get out if that is the only way to win. ”

“ A captain, whether on his own ground or another, should make it a rule to go and inspect thoroughly the wicket on which the match is to be played, in order that he may be in a position, should he win the toss, to decide whether to take first innings or give it to his opponents. A not too hastily formed judgment about the state of the wicket will also help him considerably in his choice of bowlers. It may be remarked incidentally that the more points a captain thinks out calmly before a match begins, the better is he likely to succeed in his management. ”

“ For obvious reasons many of the qualities most desirable in a captain are the result of experience of cricket and the world. But the possession of them depends less upon the time a man has lived and played cricket than upon how much he has observed and thought. Given two men with equal powers of observation and thought, the one who has played the longest will naturally know the most. ”

“ He also has the very important duty of selecting the eleven to represent the university in their great match; whereas in most cases a captain is aided by a selection committee, who share with him the responsibility of choosing between rival candidates for places. An ordinary club captain may or may not have various responsibilities, but they are usually confined to winning matches as they come. In country-house cricket a captain's chief duty is to let every one have a bowl and make the match a social success. ”

“ The practical management of a side in the field involves a knowledge of the whole game of cricket, and a power to apply this knowledge to particular circumstances. It is better to lead a side by rule of thumb than not do so at all; but this is not genuine good captaincy, for no two cricket-matches are exactly alike. Different circumstances are continually arising which should be met in different ways. A captain's knowledge of the game, to be really useful, must be pliable and capable of accommodating itself. ”

“ A school captain is concerned not only with the conduct of a particular match, as an ordinary club captain is, but with the cricket welfare of the whole school. He has to see that cricket is played properly, and with a view to the production of good cricketers, not only in the upper but in the lower games. ”

“ Over after over hit to all parts of the field, without the slightest suspicion of a chance of a wicket, only convinces the self-confident captain that something must happen sooner or later—and something generally does after the match has been bowled away. The fascination that bowling has for captains and the danger it often leads to is a good reason for pausing before selecting as captain anyone who has any pretensions in this branch of the game. It is sometimes, however, impossible for a side to recognise anyone as captain except a bowler. ”

“ With two or three fine bowlers, backed by good fielding, a captain has in ordinary circumstances merely to set things in motion and wait results. Not that this succeeds so well as proper captaincy, but it does fairly well. With a weak side the case is different. Such a side has to live by its wits, which means the captain's. Incessant forethought and management are necessary to make both ends meet: every shift and device must be used, and any good that is available turned to the very best account. ”

“ But on looking round we are disappointed to find that the good captains in first-class (including of course county) cricket are extremely few, and these few are amateurs The cause of this may be that few men are able to take part in first-class cricket after they have served such an apprenticeship as would give them the experience, calmness, and judgment necessary for the difficult post of captain; or it may be that the qualifications for a good leader in the cricket-field are, from their very nature, seldom met with—in other words, that a captain is born not made, and very seldom born, too. ”

“ It is the duty of the captain to tell the bowler when he wants the pace in the run-getting to be diminished, and then, and not till then, must the bowler begin to bowl straight and short with that object. But until certain instructions are given, the bowler must never stop for an instant in his endeavour to get the batsman's wicket. If he has experimented with every one of his arts and is unsuccessful, or even if he becomes too expensive in run-getting before he has done this, the captain's duty is to take him off. ”

“ The captain, when he is not a bowler, sees more of the game—the strength or weakness of the bowling and so on—if he is at the wicket than if he is at point or elsewhere. As to fielding at mid-off, mid-on, and out in the country, even for these places wicket-keeping encourages quick bending and reaching, and general alertness of mind and unflagging attention—merits which should be but seldom are insisted on in what we may call the ordinary positions. The wicket-keeper must, in sheer self-defence, be quick not merely to move but also to anticipate ”

“ His assumption of the double role of captain and wicket keeper is notice to his men that however severe they may deem their duties, his require greater muscular strength, greater activity, greater continuance of effort and energy, greater brain power and keener eyesight than theirs. Every danger to which the fielders may be exposed is shared by the captain. When the ball is struck to any fielder an unobstructed view of it enables him to perform his duties without fear, for the watchful eye robs it of danger. ”

“ An energetic and keen boy captain will usually manage before the close of the summer term to get together a team of fair merit; even if the stuff he has to work upon is inferior in quality, the great amount of time at his disposal for practice, and the assistance he receives from the
school professionals and masters, ought always to ensure a keen captain having a tolerable eleven before the summer holidays begin. It may be taken as true that a bad fielding school eleven denotes a bad and slack captain. Whatever may be the batting and bowling material at his disposal ”

“ If a captain keeps his eye open to all these little things, and does his best to eradicate them and others of the same nature from his men, if he is a keen zealous cricketer gifted with a calm temperament and sound judgment, he may rest assured that before he has led his men very long he will be the captain of a good team. ”

“ It is a strange fact connected with cricket that a good captain is but seldom met with. The game has made such progress in popularity during the last thirty years, and the numbers of those who are proficient in its different branches have increased so enormously, that we should certainly expect to find in our county and other important matches captains who thoroughly understand the duties they are called upon to fulfil. ”

“ They tell me I’m captain of Templeton this year. (Laughter and cheers.) I can tell you I’m proud of it, and only wish I wasn’t going to Oxford in the autumn. (Cheers and cries of ‘Don’t go.’) The comfort is, you’ll have a rattling good captain in Mansfield when I’m gone. (Cheers and a few howls.) I don’t wonder some of the young ’uns howl, for he’ll make some of you sit up, which I could never do. (Great laughter among the Seniors, and signs of dissension in the Den.) But I’ve not got to make a speech. There’s a lot of business. The first thing is the cricket captain. ”

“ It is the captain's duty, even more than the bowler's, to see that this does not happen.
On a true hard wicket we never like to see a captain putting his mid-on or short-leg close in to the batsman, to field what is called 'silly' mid-on; the risk of standing near in on a hard wicket to a batsman who can hit at all is not by any means slight, and we have on several occasions seen men placed in this position get very nasty blows. Boyle, the Australian mid-on, stood about as near in as any man ever did stand ”

“ For there are many people who have eyes to see and do not see Of course it is remarkably easy to criticise, and exceedingly difficult to do as well as those whom one criticises. What needs emphasising is, that more may be learnt in one match with the eyes open than in a hundred with them shut. As a matter of fact, most good captains are cricketers of some standing, but it is worth noticing that many of the very best have been comparatively young.
It would be absurd to expect a boy at school to be a really good captain, for he cannot in the nature of things have had enough experience. ”

“ Captaining an eleven is nothing more nor less than leading men in a particular sphere—the cricket-field. And to be a good captain, a man must first of all have the natural gift for leadership—which is probably an inborn quality synonymous with force of character—and then be able to apply this gift to the requirements of cricket. ”