MS Dhoni has had a horror show so far on India’s tour of England, but he’s not the first skipper to come undone against England in recent times. Jo Harman investigates the captain’s curse afflicting England’s opponents.
Richie Benaud once famously said: “Captaincy is 90 per cent luck and 10 per cent skill. But don’t try it without that 10 per cent.” Opposition skippers who have pitted their wits against England might well feel aggrieved that they haven’t received their fair share of that 90 per cent over the last 12 months.
Let’s start with MS Dhoni, who touched down in England last month with the reputation as the best captain in world cricket. Dhoni has been the man with the Midas touch since taking the reins; leading a merry band of young upstarts to glory in the inaugural World Twenty20 in 2007, guiding his country to the top of the Test tree and bringing home the World Cup with the pressure of a nation on his shoulders. He’s even found time to captain Chennai Super Kings to successive IPL titles.
But since arriving on English shores, Captain Cool – the man who could apparently do no wrong – has morphed into Captain Calamity. His form with the bat has been woeful, his leadership has lacked imagination and his Keystone Kop keeping has become a constant source of ridicule. But Dhoni would argue that the 90 per cent luck that Benaud believes makes a good captain has not been on his side.
He lost his premier strike bowler in the first session of the first Test, the one experienced, match fit opener in his squad succumbed to injury in the same match, and Harbhajan Singh and Yuvraj Singh have now been ruled out for the rest of the series. As Dhoni ponders what misfortune will next befall him, perhaps he can find some solace in the fact that he is not the only captain to suffer at England’s hand of late.
Things started so well for Sri Lanka’s new Test captain Tillakaratne Dilshan earlier this summer. He followed up a quickfire ton in a warm-up fixture against Middlesex with a half-century in his first innings as Test skipper in Cardiff before registering a career-best 193 at Lord’s. But that was as good as it got for Dilshan as he broke his thumb after a barrage of short stuff from Chris Tremlett and was forced to sit out the final Test and watch from the sidelines as his side slumped to a series defeat.
The Barmy Army’s favourite pantomime villain Ricky Ponting suffered a similar fate over the winter, only without the runs to soften the blow. Having endured a wretched series with the bat the Aussie skipper broke his pinky spilling a slip catch at the WACA and after battling through the pain to oversee a humiliating defeat at the MCG he fell on his sword, handing the reins to Michael Clarke.
Prior to Ponting, the captain who took on Andrew Strauss and his men was Pakistan’s Salman Butt. Perhaps the less said about the better, and bad luck had little to do with his downfall, but once again a captain came unstuck during a series against a rampant England side.
Plenty would argue, and with some justification, that neither Dhoni or Ponting showed the necessary 10 per cent skill as outlined in Benaud’s captaincy dictum, but based on the events of the past year, skipper’s preparing to face England would do well to beware the “Curse of the Captain”.
