Chappell's 2 cents on leadership

The more illustrious of the Chappell brothers gives his views on captaincy and I felt they not only apply to cricket, but in other situations too.

"I've always maintained this, and I don't think it will ever change. Only one man can run a cricket team and that's the captain. You have got to be out there on the field to have a feel for all the things that are going on and to be able to make the quick decisions in order to change the direction of the game in your favour. If you're getting a message from off the field then it'll be too late - you should have already realised it, being out there on the field."

A real gem - if the leader himself relies on somebody else to make his decisions, God save the team.

"There are two things that I think are crucial to captaincy. The first thing is that once you realise that all the Ws and the Ls - being the wins and losses - are going to go against your name, then immediately you're going to be a good captain because you're going to make the decisions yourself. That doesn't mean you make them on your own; you might consult your vice-captain and the senior players, but in the end it's your decision. I've always likened it to a computer: other people will feed information in, but in the end you have to spit out the answer."

This is where Steve Waugh steps in.

"There's so much being spoken about the pressures on a captain; well, there is a simple way to alleviate that because much of it is placed on the person by himself. And the way to overcome that is to set your own levels and standards. If you are meeting your standards, then you needn't have to worry about what people are writing or saying. You've got to be fairly thick-skinned to do that. I didn't need to pick up the paper in the morning to read that I'd had a bad day as captain. If I wasn't the first one to know that, then I was a dope and I shouldn't have been captaining Australia."

Perhaps Dhoni can read this now and realize - which Dravid didn't do 2 years ago.

I would have posted the full discussion text from Cricinfo, were it not for one Mr. Sanjay Manjrekar spewing nonsense from every pore in between Chappell's views.

Anyways here goes for those who want to read it all: Click