Captaincy Mars Batting Prowess in Indian Premier League

By: Sandipan Bose

Picking the best player as your captain isn’t the obvious way to do things. However this tactic can backfire if the team starts failing all of a sudden.

For three seasons or more, Kings XI Punjab had the South African player, David Miller, a star batsman, who could hit the ball out of the park at will.

He was a free-flowing player and had all the attributes of a natural athlete. But the moment he was made the captain of the team, Miller’s performance dipped severely.

So much so, that, the team owners had to politely remove him from captaincy and put a Test cricket specialist like Murali Vijay at the helm of things.

After playing the IPL final two years ago, the Kings’ performance nose dived from years’ previous. They won only three matches last year out of 14 and didn’t look in great control of things.

This year too, they started off quite slowly and lost a fair bit of momentum in the middle of the tournament. Given that this the IPL is also a business proposition, the Kings have just four matches to enhance their standing.

Otherwise, they don’t stand a chance to be a part of the playoff stages. This is so because 16 to 18 are the safest number to qualify for the next stage of the event.

Getting back to the matter of picking the best player as captain – this isn’t a wise decision. Based on the combination, a team leader should be picked on the basis of his past performances, his ability to adapt and his power to think beyond himself.

Miller had all that as a player, but he was rushed into the job by his team, which affected his batting. His confidence is so low that he has collected only 131 runs from 10 matches with an average of 16.37.

This was the same Miller who scored 446 runs from 16 matches in the 2014 IPL with an average of 44.60. Last year, too, he scored 357 runs from 13 matches (average of 32.45). However things weren’t as bad as Miller’s performance this year.