What makes a captain?

What makes a captain?

The popular misconception is that your captain is your best player, your star.

The universal quality looked for in every captain, is undoubtedly leadership. A good captain must rally the troops on and off the field, take a game by the scruff of the neck and have the pluck to take responsibility for a poor performance (only after they’ve thrown everything at the opposition in the face of defeat!).

A captain’s level of responsibility will differentiate depending on the level of the club they play for.

Outside the professional game, a team’s captain has a very prominent role in the team. In University ‘Sports Societies’ a captain will receive offerings (often in the way of lager) and good will in return for a place in the team, with the captain also acting as manager. Whilst the system helps build team morale and camaraderie, skilled players are often overlooked, if the captain doesn’t warm to them or they are unwilling to partake in ridiculous initiations.

I, myself, have only ever been made captain twice. The first occasions was at primary school, when my head teacher experimented with giving me the armband of our football team, and needless to say the role went over my head. All I knew was that a defender kicked the ball when the other team had it! The second, a little more recently, was a term as captain of a five aside football team. Whilst we were dreadful I took the ‘Gatorade’ sweatband that was my armband very seriously although my main duty was hammering on the door of students that made up my team, still in bed half an hour before kick-off.

The effect of the armband, a boost rather than a burden.

The responsibility of captaincy usually enhances the athlete unto which it is bestowed. Whilst the armband cannot always tame some of sports wildest characters, an abrasive personality is a strong one, a trait that makes a strong captain. The likes of Eric Cantona and Roy Keane have been involved in their fair share of off the ball incidents, but no-one would doubt their ability to lead, with their antics helping them achieve cult hero status. Avid sports fans will no doubt be aware of the off the field controversy that constantly plagues Joey Barton. However similarities can be drawn between the likes of Barton, Cantona and Keane, with his bold character, and nerve makes him an ideal captain. Barton has flourished since being given the armband. His new found responsibility has allowed him to be a stronger role model, a box needing to be ticked for any aspiring captain.

The role of captain varies between each sport, and each captain will take on their own style of leadership.

Due to these differences, a captain can take a role of varying prominence. For instance in football, the captain takes a more motivational role than tactical, and their attitude towards the game, and their intensity should set a precedent for the rest of the team, whereas in cricket, the captain is very much the coach’s tactical general on the field, with the coach further from the action than in football. A cricket captains off the field duties usually include an involvement in squad selection as well as an organisational role with regards to training.

In some sports a player’s position will require them to lead.

On a rugby pitch your likely to hear the screams of a scrum half organising their forwards, and the teams fly halves calling out plays to the backs. In Rugby Union, the half backs are very much tactical leaders on the pitch, captain or not. The same can be said for a quarterback in American Football, who, when the offence team are on the field, is charged with creating and running set plays. Your quarterback calls all the shots.

Cut out for captaincy?

In this instance, does the natural leadership required to be a quarterback or scrum-half, mean that the role of captain within a Rugby or American Football becomes diminished? Will a captain feel undermined if other members of the team have increased responsibility, or is the ability to keep a team with too many chiefs, a test of a captain’s leadership? Does every sport have a position that natural lends itself to captaincy and if so, why isn’t it the case that the majority of rugby union teams have half-backs as captains, when so many offensive NFL captains are quarterbacks?

In cricket the most successful captains are those who cannot bat to save their lives, but have that ability to understand people. Of course having grey hair helps as well, e.g. Mike Brearley.

Can't bat to save their lives? Strauss

Haha, very unfair but true of recent times!

im skipper of my club side

ive been captain of my sunday side

gboycottnut wrote:In cricket the most successful captains are those who cannot bat to save their lives, but have that ability to understand people. Of course having grey hair helps as well, e.g. Mike Brearley.

Wearing glasses helps even more to enhance a sense of authority - eg MJK Smith, Vettori, Clive Lloyd, Peter Roebuck ....

Corporalhumblebucket wrote:

gboycottnut wrote:In cricket the most successful captains are those who cannot bat to save their lives, but have that ability to understand people. Of course having grey hair helps as well, e.g. Mike Brearley.

Wearing glasses helps even more to enhance a sense of authority - eg MJK Smith, Vettori, Clive Lloyd, Peter Roebuck ....

CF - do you wear glasses? If not, perhaps you could go half way and start off this season with a monocle?

no i dont, but i do facepalm quite a lot, when the bowlers are erratic.

As I do sunday team captincy i cant really facepalm if a bowler does badly as its generally and under 15 or something

Captains in most sports are simply figureheads, a cricket captain isn't just a figurehead, they have to be tactically astute too.

hodge wrote:As I do sunday team captincy i cant really facepalm if a bowler does badly as its generally and under 15 or something

i captain saturday and sunday, and i facepalm all the time lol, especially when we missed out on promotion by 6 points

we missed by 11 points, but then teams above us in the league pulled out so it meant that 7 teams got promoted

we had a couple of sides get kicked out, for cheating by signing all their players on british passports, but were actually found to be illegal immgrants

It's a shame this topic hasn't encouraged debate so far, as it is an interesting one which warrants some discussion.

As you correctly point out, a captain's responsibility varies greatly depending on the standard of the side in question. For example, Andrew Strauss is a great man-manager, but not a great tactician (even by his own admission), but he doesn't need to be, given:
1) The majority of the tactics are dictated by the backroom staff
2) Because he's got such a good bowling attack he doesn't need to create wickets from nowhere, using tactical strokes of genius.

What Strauss does have to do is manage a side with plenty of egos (Trott, KP and Broad being the main ones), something your run of the mill sunday league captain doesn't have to deal with.

One of the workshops at a conference I was at recently was entitled "leadership and captaincy". The general consensus was that your captain had to be a leader, as he was the on-field general and if he couldn't lead no one would follow. He's the decision maker, so has to be able to take a step back and analyse what's going on.

Personally (at age-group average international cricket) I need my captain to complement myself, and challenge me to get the best out of both of us. I'm not looking for a "yes man" who will just do as I say. There are a few intangibles though:
- Respect: if your captain doesn't have the respect of your team, then I suggest you have a problem. At my level, he has to be hence undroppable (or the kids will soon be talking about "teacher's pet".
- Creative: we aren't good enough to win all our matches by sticking to plan A. We therefore need a captain who on occasions thinks outside the box and comes up with something.
- Calm under pressure: a given.
- Risk taker: see creative. A captain who's not prepared to take risks won't go far at our level.
- Self-awareness: this is an interesting one, but goes a long way to explain why Andy Flintoff was such an average captain. In fact, as an anecdote, a recent survey (about 3 years ago?) was carried out in the 100 most improved companies in the US. When asked what their best/most useful quality was, some ridiculous proportion of the CEOs (I think 97 or 98) responded with "self-awareness". And when you think about it, it's absolutely spot on. What chance do you have of managing and leading others to success if you can't sort yourself out first? Flintoff clearly had issues with his life when he was asked to be captain, which in part explains why he made such a hash of it.
- intuitive: not quite the same as creative, your skipper needs to have a "feel" for the game, understand where it's heading, why, and how to stop it/help it get there.

At the lower "weeds" levels (and believe me I've been there) your captain is also the manager, the guy who makes sure everyone turns up at the game on time, everyone plays a bit (no specialist fielders), has fun, and wants to play next week. He needs to make sure the kit is where it should be, the stumps are complete, the fast bowler is changed in time to start, etc. He also has to deal with the umpires (who are invariably rubbish), etc etc.

At my level, I don't want the captain to have to bother about any of this. Indeed I don't want to bother about it myself. Usually the VC leads the warm-up (the same for every match, thus allowing routine), one or two players are in charge of the training kit and putting it away after the warm-up. All the captain and I have to worry about is the upcoming match and how we're going to win it. We'll usually have a look at the pitch, decide what to do if we win the toss, go over specific tactics to specific opponents, and then get on with it. During the game if I see anything obvious I'll pass it on (usually via the 12th man with a drinks bottle, or one of the boundary fielders) but it's up to him whether he listens or not (if he doesn't we'll debate it in the debrief afterwards).

One final responsibility: for me, the captain must have the final say on the match-day 11. It is after all his side, and he's the one who's got to deal with them when the game gets going.

what he said

One century in 30 months apparently

Cf is a very underrated captain lol

shankythebiggestengfan wrote:Cf is a very underrated captain lol