Tag Archives: captaincy

Short, sweet, smart

Posted in cricket, IPL by

From Aakash Chopra, an insightful piece on captaincy in the T20 format. Tempted to clip, but read the whole.

Aakash, incidentally, will be live on the Yorker show on Yahoo tomorrow.

On Tests, captaincy, and a chicken soup moment…

Posted in cricket by

“I am irritated by own writing”, AdviceToWriters quotes Gustave Flaubert as saying.

Me too. 🙂

Must be one of those blah moods. Whatever — no point irritating you as well, so will leave you with some interesting reads from the past 24 hours.

Harsha Bhogle discusses the art of captaincy with Aakash Chopra and Adam Gilchrist. Nice reading — not sure I agree with the takeaway that the captain’s importance increases as the format grows shorter, though. Sid Vaidyanathan nailed it when on Twitter just now he asked if the Hong Kong Sixes had produced the best captains of all time. Related, a recent Aakash Chopra piece on captaincy, especially in the T20 format.

Another good Harsha interview is the one with Steve Waugh. Again, I am not sure I agree with the takeaway that it is time to introduce day-night Tests.

Test cricket at night is definitely possible. I would have loved to play day-night Test cricket. I think it is exciting, brings another dimension to the game. People want a bit of a change, they want that excitement. Why not bring that in Test cricket? We have got it in Twenty20s. Let’s get a pink ball in and play a day-night Test, if it is possible. Obviously in England it is not really possible because it doesn’t get dark till 10 o’clock in summer. Maybe in the subcontinent the dew might make it impossible. So you’ve got to have common sense around it as well.

So then, given those problems and others, day-night Tests could remain at best a curiosity, an innovation specific to certain countries but not to the ICC universe? Don’t see the larger point of that.

Never mind all that — here’s a chicken soup story on the meeting between an authentic cricket legend and his octogenarian fan.

Oh, and today I am back to hosting the live show. Questions, suggestions, links worth throwing up there? Post them here, and I’ll “do the needful” 🙂 Link to the show, as always, on Twitter. Mine, and the Yahoo stream.