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The greatest tactician

Checkmate

Checkmate

School Boy/Girl Captain
There are two important qualities to being a captain - being a leader of men, and being a tactician. Often, the best captains are the ones lauded as great leaders, bringing his team together like no one else could and getting the most out of each individual. On the other hand, his tactics could leave much to be desired. Of the current lot, Dhoni, Strauss and Ponting are acknowledged as great leaders but are often criticized for their strategies/tactics. For example Dhoni taking slips out too early or Ponting opting to bowl first at Edgbaston.

Of course, the backroom staff, i.e. coaches, have a lot of say in what type of strategies and tactics are used in a certain match. So, which captains or captain-coach combinations in cricket history were the best at devising strategies or tactics in test cricket? Is it Douglas Jardine and his crew with regards to Bodyline? Others?
 
smash84

smash84

The Tiger King
Checkmate said:
There are two important qualities to being a captain - being a leader of men, and being a tactician. Often, the best captains are the ones lauded as great leaders, bringing his team together like no one else could and getting the most out of each individual. On the other hand, his tactics could leave much to be desired. Of the current lot, Dhoni, Strauss and Ponting are acknowledged as great leaders but are often criticized for their strategies/tactics. For example Dhoni taking slips out too early or Ponting opting to bowl first at Edgbaston.

Of course, the backroom staff, i.e. coaches, have a lot of say in what type of strategies and tactics are used in a certain match. So, which captains or captain-coach combinations in cricket history were the best at devising strategies or tactics in test cricket? Is it Douglas Jardine and his crew with regards to Bodyline? Others?
Click to expand...
Hanise Cronje and Bob Woolmer were great tacticians.
 
smash84

smash84

The Tiger King
Apparently Ian Chappell was a shrewd tactician too. Didn't see his captaincy in action though. Got a lot of praise from Imran Khan.
 
fredfertang

fredfertang

Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
Cricket history is littered with excellent captains but my vote for the best of all is Jardine. He had to achieve what he did on his own as the tour management didn't like his tactics, nor did a couple of his own team and the entire Australian nation hated him (not that he gave a **** about that of course) - worth remembering too that what he achieved was to comprehensively defeat a quite outstanding Australian team
 
vcs

vcs

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Mike Brearley? Managed to justify his place in the team based on captaincy alone, while averaging 22 with the bat.
 
kingkallis

kingkallis

International Coach
Checkmate said:
There are two important qualities to being a captain - being a leader of men, and being a tactician. Often, the best captains are the ones lauded as great leaders, bringing his team together like no one else could and getting the most out of each individual. On the other hand, his tactics could leave much to be desired. Of the current lot, Dhoni, Strauss and Ponting are acknowledged as great leaders but are often criticized for their strategies/tactics. For example Dhoni taking slips out too early or Ponting opting to bowl first at Edgbaston.

Of course, the backroom staff, i.e. coaches, have a lot of say in what type of strategies and tactics are used in a certain match. So, which captains or captain-coach combinations in cricket history were the best at devising strategies or tactics in test cricket? Is it Douglas Jardine and his crew with regards to Bodyline? Others?
Click to expand...
In that case, Greame Smith leads the current lot.

Allan Border - all time great!
 
Howe_zat

Howe_zat

Audio File
Something has to be said for Imran Khan as a leader. I've heard it argued that he personally was the only thing holding his team together.

"A great leader. When Imran Khan took to that field, the ten men behind him, they believed in him, believed in the team he was leading and believed that Pakistan could achieve anything" ~ Micheal Holding
 
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Shri

Shri

Mr. Glass
If annoying the australians is the only criteria for being a good captain, Gangly is the greatest captain ever.:p
 
vcs

vcs

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Cronje was a very gifted batsman - I remember in particular some of his ODI knocks in the '90s.
 
NasserFan207

NasserFan207

International Vice-Captain
I think Brearley is the exceptional example, given just how average he was purely as a cricketer.

The closest example today would be Darren Sammy. :ph34r:
 
Burgey

Burgey

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Pure tactical genius, it has to be Jardine.

Many others in the tier below. Chappelli was great, though a lot of that was his players would walk over broken glass for him. Benaud was apparently superb, Brearley too. Though I suspect the latters ability was more man management than pure tactics. Taylor a superb tactician, Fleming was too.

Michael Vaughan is under rated here too. To carry off that tactic of openly cheating with the use of mints and having his bowlers on and off the field between spells to rest and get coached while the match was in progress, without any sanction whatsoever, was pure genius.
 
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M0rphin3

M0rphin3

International Debutant
Dhoni is so similar to punter, both are weak tacticians but has better captiancy records due to better teams/sheer luck.
 
BoyBrumby

BoyBrumby

Englishman
DRJ is pretty hard to go past. Whilst he had two very fine bowlers at his command in Voce and Larwood, the latter, generally considered the greater talent, had been put to the sword by Bradman in 1930. 32/33 was, to my mind, unequivocably a triumph of tactics.

His rep has now been rather tainted by his largely uninspriring spell as chairman of selectors & all round head honcho, but by most accounts dear old Raymond Illingworth was a great thinking captain too. Presided over the only time we've regained the Ashes in Oz since Bodyline, which is no small achievement. Captaining such, er, strong willed characters as Boycott and Snow successfully shows his man management was pretty decent too. Probably some irony in his unwillingness to give Atherton the free reign he'd enjoyed himself at least partly contributed to his tenure at supremo being an unhappy one.
 
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