Cricket is one of those rare sports where the decisions made on the field by the captain have a major bearing on the outcome. For most sports the captain is looked to for leadership, character and sometimes charisma but it is the manager or the coach that does all the heavy lifting when it comes to planning how the game is played and making the key tactical decisions such as which formation to play and when and who to substitute. Even in the modern game, with the enhanced role of coaches and managers and access to vast amounts of live statistics, the cricket captain still has an essential role.
Leadership is of course important in cricket. It is a team game and the captain is responsible for ensuring that the different parts of the team work together for the common good. But captaincy in cricket demands another skill and that is the ability to make decisions during play – who to bowl, how to set the field, the batting order, whether to attack or defend, the pace of the innings and so on. That is before you consider the responsibility he or she bears to uphold the “Spirit of the Game’, something that can result in the captain appearing before a disciplinary hearing if he or she is accounted to have lost control of the behaviour of the team.
Each week young players turn up to nets in clubs around the province. They practice their bowling and batting and, in a well run session, will also spend time on fielding and fitness. Occasionally, perhaps during a rain break, there might be a discussion about general tactics and how the team intends to approach the upcoming match. But for the most part it is only at the weekend when they turn out for their club teams and, if they are lucky and are able to observe and learn from the actions of experienced captains, that they can learn anything of what it takes to captain a side.
But how many of them actually get the chance? It is a rhetorical question as I know the answer [or at least the best answer we have from the often incomplete scorecards submitted to the Paul Reynolds]. There are 23 youth players who have captained a team in Open Competitions, but most of these for only a single match or two. Four players have done the job regularly for their clubs, James Machin [North Kildare], Ruadhan Jones [Terenure], Mark Collier [Clontarf] and Adam Chester [Phoenix].
That youth players rarely take on the duties of captaincy of a team is hardly surprising. Having to get out a team each weekend, deal with the multiple and often competing personalities that make up the club team, and be responsible for all the other off-field administrative duties could easily scar them for life. But if they are never called upon to make decisions at moments of pressure on the cricket pitch how will they ever learn to be a good captain.
So firstly a call to coaches to consider how the skills of captaincy can be imparted to the next generation of young cricketers. But also to clubs to provide the opportunities and put in place the support structures [e.g. managers, administrators, mentors to remove some of the off-field burdens] for young players to captain teams [next year]. After all it is the art of captaincy [to use the title of probably the most famous cricketing book on the subject by Mike Brearley] and that is something that can only be experienced and tested on the cricket field itself.