It is more or a less a batsman’s game this cricket isn’t it. Even fans tend to be more fascinated by hundreds than five wicket hauls. Most cricket nerds would know that Kumar Sangakkara scored 63 international hundreds but the fact that Muttiah Muralitharan picked up 77 five-wicket hauls hardly get a mention.
The same goes with leadership. Despite all his accolades, Murali was never even considered for captaincy. He wasn’t even named vice-captain of the side. Of the 17 men who have captained Sri Lanka in Test match cricket, only three have been bowlers – D.S. de Silva, Rangana Herath and Suranga Lakmal – all by default and they were never named full time captains.
Australia is one country that rarely deviates the captaincy from a batsman. There have been some successful ones like Richie Benaud but Aussies tend to think that while on the field bowlers have so much to do and they do not want them the additional burden of captaincy.
However, in Asia we have had bowlers as some of our most successful captains. Imran Khan is the finest captain produced by Pakistan while Kapil Dev was the first Asian to win the World Cup. These two legendary players had long spells as captains of their respective countries with Imran leading in 48 Tests and Kapil Dev skippering 34 Tests.
Pakistan in particular have given their bowlers equal opportunities like their batsmen with the likes of Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis having long captaincy spells. For India their most recent bowling captain was Anil Kumble.
So we Sri Lankans instead of buying into the argument that bowlers can’t lead should perhaps look at our neighbours and learn a few things and try and treat bowlers with the same dignity as batsman. It’s been 40 years since we gained Test status and we are yet to appoint a bowler as a full time Test captain. That is an indication about our reluctance to hand the captaincy reins to bowlers.
One of the guys who looked a natural leader in recent times was Suranga Lakmal. He has been in the international circuit for some 12 years and as the leader of the bowling unit, Lakmal has earned the admiration of team management for the efforts he takes to make all bowlers, especially the young ones, comfortable in their roles.
Lakmal did bungle during the first England Test in Galle when he was caught on camera engaging in card games and earned the wrath of administration and public. This was a rare indiscretion in what has been a truly unblemished career.
Lakmal is also the only Asian captain to win a Test match in Barbados. A strong fortress of Caribbean cricket, West Indies’ unbeaten record here was broken when Sri Lanka triumphed here in 2018. There are of course those who say that Lakmal was captain by default standing up for the suspended Dinesh Chandimal.
But here’s something very interesting. Lakmal skippered Tamil Union for the Premier League title in 2016 thus ending a 65-year wait for one of the leading cricket playing clubs to win the first division title. Suranga was hailed by one of Tamil Union’s former Presidents and leading lawyer Dinal Philips for the way he looked after the club’s outstation players having begun his own career at the club’s hostel having arrived in Colombo from the far off Debarawewa.
However, whenever, the captain is replaced our system always looks for batsmen. When Angelo Mathews quit in 2017, Lakmal was not even discussed as a possible replacement. The same applied when Mathews’ successor Dinesh Chandimal was replaced abruptly in Australia. Our system predominantly prepares, promotes and appoints batsmen as captains.
Spare a thought to Chaminda Vaas who had all the attributes to lead the side and he wanted the job too. But he was never ever given a chance.
Rather than being fixed with theories that captaincy would suit batsmen and not bowlers, we need to give the bowlers a chance to see how they would fare.
Suranga’s time is now gone. He turned 34 this year and probably will play for two more years. So there’s no chance of him getting the job unless he’s come in as stop gap captain. But we need to move on from these unproven theories. While all cricketers are not leaders we should not further categorize saying only batsmen can lead.
We wouldn’t have known the value of Sanath Jayasuriya as an opener if we had not gambled with that ploy. Ajantha Mendis had not played in the Tier ‘A’ when the selectors took a bold decision to throw him to the deep end. You wouldn’t know how good players are at their roles unless you try. This theory should apply for captains as well.
