by Anjan Roy

Created on: June 24, 2009   Last Updated: July 04, 2009

In my opinion, Sunil Gavaskar is the best cricketing captain in the world. I don't think a captain should be judged by the success and failure alone. A captain should be judged keeping in mind the players he has and the environment surrounding him. If you simply go by success rate, there have been many captains, who have shown great success banking on a very talented team. In reality, specially in the game of cricket, you really don't need a brilliant captain when you already have a winning team. You just need to make sure that you are making enough right decisions so that your players can perform. The real test of a captain comes when one goes in real adverse conditions and tries to overcome the constraints to get victory or at least avoid defeat.

During his captaincy, Gavaskar hardly got a talented team. When he started, the great spin trio of Bedi,Prasanna and Chandrashekhar had gone. We did not have any match winning bowlers other than a young Kapil Dev. Dilip Vengsarkar was just starting his career at that time. The only two batsmen we could rely were Vishwanath and Gavaskar himself.

Gavaskar was the first Indian captain who started his bowling attack with 4 slips and a gully against Pakistan in 1979 with Kapil Dev bowling the new ball. He was the first Indian captain who made use of video analysis to find the weaknesses in Javed Miandad's front foot movement and got him LBW off Kapil 6 times in the series. We won the series convincingly against Pakistan. We won the following two domestic series against Australia and West Indies too.

Gavaskar might not have had the aggressive body language or the mentality to crush the opponents 5-0 in every series. His mentality was first to ensure that we are not losing the series and once we got that assurance, try to have the players play their natural game. In my opinion, this was probably the best strategy given the limitations he had with his team.

When Gavaskar indeed get a team full of talented individuals, he did show us that we can also be the world champions. In 1985, he had a team with Kapil Dev, Shastri, Sreekanth, Vengsarkar, Amarnath, Sivaramakrishnan and other talented players, and he did bring the Benson and Hedges cup without losing a single match. All he did to make sure that there are no differences in the team and the environment is always conducive for them to perform.

Now, why would Gavaskar not be considered the greatest captain the game has ever seen?

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