Monday, March 30, 2009

With 4 Skippers, Who’s in Charge?

It is not just die hard Dada fans who are outraged at the presumption of Kolkata Knight Rider coach that Sourav Ganguly the Prince of Calcutta would docilely step aside and have three other chaps be his skipper from time to time. It also defies all logic that there are four skippers who lead a T20 cricket team by turns. The latest cricket controversy created by KKR coach John Buchanan seems to have thrown up a host of questions which are currently being debated furiously in the cricket news.
It is not clear whether KKR coach John Buchanan aims to create a many headed monster-serpent like Hydra or perhaps a Cerberus like multi-headed guard dog of Greek myth, or indeed what his aim is, to have as many as four captains for the IPL team coached by him.
Yes we have seen different captains in different forms of the game; such as when M S Dhoni captained the T20 Indian team and Rahul Dravid led the test team etc. But to have as many as 4 captains in a single team of a single format of the game seems not only strange, it seems to defy logic and common sense that dictates that there should be one person in charge.
Each captain would reasonably have his own vision, his own strategy, his own planning; to have that change every game or every few games (as of now we do not have too many details of John Buchanan’s grand design) sounds as though the team would have a feeling of being rudderless pulled one way and then another. A leader is also one whom you look up to, come to when in doubt or in need of guidance and someone that is a confidant for his teammates. In the absence of one clear leader, as John Buchanan’s idea envisages would the players think of four men as their leader or keep changing the concept of their leader from time to time?
It is puzzling what Buchanan hope to achieve; and how such a scheme could be beneficial to a team or its players. Could be perhaps hold out captaincy as a sort of reward for the leader that performs best or does he perhaps think that there is something to be gained from keeping them all guessing? Or one more possibility occurs, Buchanan wants to prevent another power centre within the team by rotating the captaincy and the team, not letting it settle and coalesce.
So as Buchanan puts his theory of having Sourav Ganguly, Brendon McCullum, Chris Gayle and Brad Hodge captain the KKR team by turns, a dubious nation has its eyes trained on this IPL team to see if there is any merit to his theories. Another question that is doing the rounds in the cricket news is what Shah Rukh Khan has to say about this!

No comments:

Post a Comment

Labels