Bat and ball / Andrew Hughes / 04 February 2008 / 1

Andrew Hughes considers why teams decide to split the Test and ODI captaincy and the consequences of this ahead of India's ODI match against Sri Lanka

Hammered in the Twenty20 game and skittled for 194 in the first Commonwealth Bank match on Sunday, India did at least manage to fight back with the ball before rain ended proceedings. One-day captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni will be hoping that aggression continues into Tuesday's Brisbane encounter with Sri Lanka. This tournament is an important one for Dhoni. Despite leading his side to a stunning victory in the Twenty20 World Championships, it won't take too many poor performances to bring his captaincy under scrutiny from the impatient Indian media. After all, this is the first time that India have split the captaincy role. While it is seen to be working, there is no problem. But when it starts to go wrong, recent history tells us such experiments can come to a swift end.

Just ask Adam Hollioake. In 1997 England became the first international team to employ two captains, when Michael Atherton retired from one-day cricket. Like Dhoni, Hollioake began with an unexpected success, winning a tournament in Sharjah that winter. But the experiment came crashing to a halt the next summer, following crushing defeats to New Zealand and South Africa and the appointment of Alec Stewart as Test captain.

Hollioake's appointment was typical of the way a split captaincy usually arises. Atherton, just like Nasser Hussain in 2003, Steve Waugh in 2002 and Michael Vaughan last year were no longer considered effective one-day players and were dropped or persuaded to retire. For all of them, it heralded the beginning of the end of their Test captaincy too. This is why a split captaincy usually ends in tears, because the senior of the two invariably feels his authority undermined. Steve Waugh and Nasser Hussain were not happy with the arrangement and neither, so we are told, was Michael Vaughan, though he no longer says so publicly. It is one thing to know someone is being groomed as your successor, but quite another for him to be captaining alongside you.

This is where India's experiment is most interesting. When Sri Lanka appointed two new captains in 2003, it was a snub to Marvan Atapattu who had expected to take over in both formats. But when Rahul Dravid resigned, there was no clear successor and hence no-one's pride has been bruised. Dhoni cannot seriously have expected to be Test captain, given his lack of experience and dual role as batsman wicketkeeper and Kumble has already retired from the one-day game. This time, it might just work.

And those, like the new ECB Chairman Giles Clark, who feel that the answer to fixture congestion is not fewer fixtures, but squad rotation and even separate teams for different formats, will be looking on eagerly. Perhaps in a few years time, split captaincy might be the norm.

Meanwhile, Tuesday's game is intriguingly close, although I would give the edge to India. They have longer to acclimatise, even the freshly arrived players have now had two matches whereas the entire Sri Lankan squad have arrived fresh and have only played one warm up game, which they lost, in Tasmania.

If you want to back India at [1.87] you will also be hoping that Yuvraj is fit to play. If he is, India will look good value at that price. Their batting has greater depth, with Sri Lanka relying almost exclusively on stalwarts Jayawardene and Sangakkara. And the Indian bowlers, Sreesanth and Ishant Sharma in particular, will be better poised to take advantage of the bouncy Brisbane wicket than the Sri Lankans, who won't be able to call on fiery fast bowler Fernando. They might also be without veteran Jayasuriya who copped a nasty blow to the face against Tasmania. Sri Lanka are available at [1.94]

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1. TSHERING DUKPA | 04 February 2008

   Even under M S Dhoni India could have done much better, than what they have been doing so far, had the decision to take most of the players in the squad having not at all experience in the international arena and some of them having very little experience in such level. I don't think the decision to drop VVS Laxman, Rahul Dravid and Saurav Ganguly was at all profitable for three reasons- 1. They were the most experienced players, apart from Sachin Tendulkar, in the squad. 2. They were very much adapted in Australian climate compared to other players and 3. They were batting reasonably well even in the tests. Only having the ability to run faster between the wicket and fielding well cannot make the team a winner. To be at the winning side runs are very important, having seen the performance of our batsmen in the last two shorter version of the game, I am not so optimistic that India will emerge as a winner or at least number two team in the series if some luck really favour our batsmen, like the ones Australian fielders had given chances to Gautam Gambir in the abadoned match.

   Tshering Dukpa
   

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