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Journalism of Courage
A captain’s job is thankless. Good decisions are applauded once, bad decisions will be repeated through endless postmortems. For a stand-in captain, the comfort levels could be even more less. Like it happened with Rahul Dravid.
His smart handling of the bowlers and field placements went almost unnoticed in the furore over Sachin Tendulkar’s declaration. More so his adept handling of the controversy with the media.
The controversy apart, the whole affair brings us to the role of the stand-in captain, always the vice-captain of the team. With a team management comprising captain, coach and manager along with senior members, who exactly is in charge especially on the field and off the field? Does the stand-in captain get to throw his weight around or is he a mere puppet who has to bide by the time since his captaincy is only temporary.
As vice-captain, the captaincy role may just be the right opportunity for him to vindicate the selectors for their decision. At the same time he has to ensure that feathers are not ruffled till he actually is the official captain.
Chandu Borde, who stood in as captain for the injured Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi in the opening Test at Adelaide of a four match series against Australia in December 1967, is emphatic that the stand-in captain is always in charge and has full freedom.
‘‘The team may have discussed the next course of action between sessions or after close of play but when he is on the field he is in command, like I was. I took my own decisions and we would have even won the match had it not been for poor umpiring’’, says Borde. India lost that Test match by 146 runs.
Interestingly, Erapalli Prasanna, who made his debut, took three wickets in the first innings coming in as a sixth bowler. Despite that, in the second innings, Borde again brought him as fifth change.
Dilip Vengsarkar, who was forced by injury to relinquish his captaincy for one Test to Ravi Shastri, agrees that there may be a conflict of interest between official and stand-in captain. ‘‘During our times, there was no coach so Ravi (Shastri) had a free hand after I fractured my hand in the third Test against West Indies at Calcutta. I had come back home so influencing decisions from the dressing room was out of question.’’
What if the displaced captain is there and decides to butt in? ‘‘It is upto the incumbent to think which is the right way to go about it’’, says Vengsarkar. ‘‘All said and done, I think it all boils down to winning matches and for that the stand-in captain would need to have the courage of conviction.’’
