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The Indian Cricket Team’s 500th Test match would commence on September 22 at the Green Park Stadium, Kanpur when the hosts take on New Zealand in the first test of the three-match series. The hosts have started bracing themselves for a stretch of 13 home Tests, which is likely to be the longest home season in their Test history, in terms of the number of Tests played.
At the opposite end of the eye-catching, vault-filling, crowd-garnering blitzkrieg cricket, this format requires players to be at their pinnacle of excellence. Having said that, it must also be mentioned that the term excellence is subjective. Sarfaraz Khan’s reverse right-handed batting for the Royal Challengers Bangalore in the IPL is as impressive as the dour and boring Alastair Cook defence that has led him to 10000 Test runs for England, although people may look at it in different ways.
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It isn't just the players who have to adjust now, switching from the orgasmic mode of cricket to the life-nurturing one, but also the men who lead them. Test match captaincy, in popular opinion, is regarded as one of the hardest jobs in cricket, and rightfully so.
A Test match is an amalgamation of a series of events, with most of them being independent of each other. It requires critical thinking over a sustained period of time, unlike the short, rapid tactics deployed in T20 cricket. Controlling the momentum of the game for 20 or 50 overs is far easier than controlling it for 5 days. Hence, Test captaincy comes with greater challenges.
Over the years, India have had a glorious Test history. In that, although they have never been world beaters, they have always challenged and pushed to the limit the teams who have. India have been the trendsetters of legend-slaying, and it has come, it must also be mentioned, on the backs of several capitulations.
Behind the glory days have been some of the most enigmatic men that the game has ever seen, who have led the Indian cricket team through crests and troughs, and have been equally unaltered by both of them.
The BCCI has decided to felicitate all former India Test captains on the occasion of the 500th Test in Kanpur, and the Green Park is expected to be crowded by the legends of the game, come September 22. In the remembrance of Indian Test captains, here we have tried to analyse their performances and pick out 8 of the greatest men to have led the India in Tests.
#8 Sunil Gavaskar
The original ‘little master’ as he is popularly known to be, was the architect of India’s batting in Test matches throughout the 1970s and 1980s and created a sensation in the cricketing world immediately upon his arrival in 1971. In his debut Test series, Gavaskar amassed 774 runs against the mighty West Indians of that time and announced his presence as a fearless yet classical batsman.
Over the next seven years, the right-handed batsman from Mumbai went through several crests and troughs but eventually established himself as one of the finest batsmen that the world had ever seen.
Gavaskar was handed over the reins of the Test side in 1978, and his first assignment was against the West Indies, who travelled to India to play a 6-Test series. What unfolded was some riveting action of Test match cricket that saw the West Indians hanging on by a thread in the 3rd Test, losing the 4th and drawing the others.
This 1-0 victory was the beginning of a series of successes at home for India under Gavaskar, as Australia and Pakistan were beaten at home comprehensively in 1979/80, before India travelled to Australia and drew a 3 Test series 1-1. The 3rd Test of that series was remembered for India’s defence of a small target of 143 in the 4th innings at the MCG, where Australia were bundled out for a paltry 83, with Kapil Dev bagging 5 wickets.
The second half of his captaincy tenure was less successful for India, as they lost Test series in New Zealand, England, and Pakistan between 1981-83. However, they did beat England at home in 1980/81.
Gavaskar’s chief prodigy, it has to be said, was Kapil Dev, arguably the greatest all-rounder that India has ever seen. Dev scored over 2000 runs at an average of 35.24 and picked up 172 wickets at 29.65 while playing under Gavaskar. Apart from this prodigy, the spin quartet of S Venkatraghavan, BS Chandrasekar, E Prasanna and BS Bedi matured in the Gavaskar era, between 1978-85.
#7 Mohammad Azharuddin
Perhaps Indian cricket’s most famous controversial son, Mohammad Azharuddin emerged onto the international scenes in the home series against England in 1985 and stunned everyone with 3 centuries in his first three Tests. Although India lost that series 2-1, Azhar had done enough for the world to stand up and take notice.
Five years down the line, after some promising and not so promising series, he was handed over the captaincy for the first time in 1989. It saw the beginning of what is now known as home-domination by India in Tests. Out of the 7 bilateral Test series that he led India in at home, India didn’t lose any. They defeated all major Test playing nations of the time except South Africa – who India didn’t play against under Azhar’s captaincy – between 1990 to 1998, and it was one of the longest winning streaks at home by India.
In away tours, however, India failed to win a single Test series under the Hyderabadi batsman’s captaincy, except the series against Sri Lanka in 1993. They lost against Australia, New Zealand, England and South Africa between 1990-1998/99. Nevertheless, these failures cannot and must not take the sheen away from Azhar’s leadership and motivational skills and the habit of winning at home that he inculcated into the Indian Test side.
His own form too was imperious during those series victories at home. Some of his highlight knocks include the 182 against England at Calcutta in 1993, 152 against Sri Lanka in 1994 at Ahmedabad, and a series-levelling 163 against South Africa at Kanpur. Overall, he averaged 55.93 at home in 46 games and 43.93 as captain of India in 47 Tests.
A number of youngsters, who were to be few of India’s all-time greats either debuted or prospered under Azharuddin, namely Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, and Sourav Ganguly.
Ganguly, also a great captain in his own merit, made his debut alongside Rahul Dravid in 1996 at Lord’s and scored a century. Dravid too made a gutsy 95 in his first innings ever in Test match cricket.
Tendulkar was at his assailing best during the period between 1996-1999 – not that he wasn’t always at his best throughout his career – averaging 41.53, 62.50, 80.87 and 68.00 and crossing 1000 runs in a calendar year twice – in 1997 and 1999. However, for a brief period, 1996-97 to 2000 Tendulkar too had led India in Tests.
India’s most prolific wicket-taker in Tests, Anil Kumble, took a lion’s share of his 619 wickets under Azhar’s leadership. The leg-spinner accounted for 179 wickets from 36 matches that he played under Azharuddin.
#6 Kapil Dev
The man who led India to their first crowing jewel in cricket, and arguably the best all-rounder to have ever played for India, Kapil Dev had a sense of daredevilry around him that always left his admirers befuddled. Whether it was his dashing 175 in a 1983 World Cup game, coming in to bat at 17/5, or his brilliant running catch to dismiss Clive Lloyd in the final of the same tournament, Kapil always brought the action to the table.
In Test cricket, he became the first ever Indian bowler to get to 300 and 400 Test wickets and held the record for the most number of wickets by any bowler in Tests – at 434 – at one stage before being overtaken by Courtney Walsh.
In his second series in Test cricket, against the West Indies at home, the all-rounder scored 329 runs at an average of 65.80 and took 17 wickets at 33.00 from 6 Tests. In the next home series, against Australia, he went a notch higher picking up 28 wickets against Australia in 6 Tests and also scored 212 runs.
When Pakistan arrived later the same year, Kapil Dev unleashed his fearsome best, scalping 32 Pakistanis from 6 Tests and also making 238 runs. These tremendous performances saw him being handed over the captaincy of the side five years into his Test career.
His first assignment, against the West Indies in West Indies in 1983 was a tough one, as India went down to Clive Lloyd’s men 0-2 in a 5-match series. However, Kapil did his share of work in that series as well, scoring 254 runs at 42.33 and picking up 17 wickets 24.94 against a West Indian line-up that had Viv Richards, Clive Lloyd, Michael Holding, Andy Roberts, Joel Garner and Malcolm Marshall.
Post the World Cup victory of 1983 – that made India’s presence felt in the cricketing world – Kapil’s devils, as they were known thereafter, drew a series against Pakistan at home and lost to the West Indies, again at home. In Tests, Kapil Dev’s moment of glory came in 1986, when India, for the first time, won back to back Tests in England and defeated them 2-0 in a three-match series.
Dilip Vengsarkar, one of India’s finest batsmen, scored 2388 runs at 61.23 – his highest average under any captain – under Kapil’s captaincy and Azharuddin scored over 1000 runs in the formative years of his career between 1985-87 under Kapil Dev.
#5 Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi
All of the aforementioned captains led sides who knew how to win Test matches. From Gavaskar to Azharuddin, each captain led a side that had players with sufficient Test experience and who knew what it took to win Test matches. These captains had gifted sides; Gavaskar had the spin quartet, Azhar had Sachin, Sourav and Dravid, Kapil had Gavaskar, Vengsarkar, Srikanth et al, but there was one man in India’s history who had to build everything from scratch.
Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi, or the Nawab of Pataudi, as he was known as back then, was the captain who inculcated the winning habit into the Indian cricket team in Tests for the first time. Only 3 out of the 13 captains who had preceded MAK Pataudi managed to win Test matches during their tenures.
Pataudi’s stats of 9 wins and 19 losses from 40 Test matches might seem ordinary at the outset, but behind these numbers lies the tale of lifting a side that didn’t know how to feature in international cricket and leaving it at a position from where it could challenge the best in the arena.
It didn’t begin all too well for him, though, as in his first assignment as India’s captain his team was whitewashed 5-0 by the West Indies in their own backyard in 1962. India managed to draw the next two series that they played – at home – against Australia and England, with MAK scoring 308 runs and 270 runs against them respectively.
A 1-0 victory came thereafter against New Zealand at home, but it was soon followed by series defeats, once against the West Indies, this time at home, and then in England and Australia – both of them being clean sweeps. Pataudi scored a brilliant 148 at Leeds, albeit in a losing cause in 1967, and also scored 3 fifties in Australia in the Aussie summer of 1967-68.
BS Bedi, S Venkatraghavan, and BS Chandrasekar had already made their debuts under Pataudi and has started creating ripples all around the world. The toil and the struggle finally bore results when India won their first ever away Tests series, defeating New Zealand 3-1 in a 4-Test series in 1968.
E Prasanna took three 5-wicket hauls in that series, Bapu Nadkarni took 2 five-fors, while Bedi took one five-wicket haul. This was the beginning of the domination of Indian spinners at the international level, something that has continued till date. The aforementioned gentlemen combined to blow away England in January-February 1973 defeating them 2-1 in a 5-match series.
India now knew how to win Test matches and the captains who followed MAK were rendered a lot luckier.
#4 MS Dhoni
The boy with the golden spoon, the gambler, or the Midas himself – whatever adjective you choose to hail Mahendra Singh Dhoni, you cannot take away the purple patch that he brought to the team with his arrival. In the longest format of the game, Dhoni first rose to prominence during the team’s tour to Pakistan in 2005-06, scoring 179 runs from 3 Tests at 59.66.
His heroics in the ICC World T20 in 2007 wherein he led India to the title saw him being appointed as the captain of the limited-overs side. Soon, after the retirement of Anil Kumble in 2008, he was handed over the reins of the Test team as well.
Dhoni had a tough challenge to overcome in his first series as India’s captain, which was against England, immediately after the Mumbai terror attacks of 2008. What unfolded in the Chennai Test of that series would still be fresh in an Indian cricket fan’s mind, wherein after a brutal assault by Virender Sehwag in the 3rd session of the 4th day, Sachin Tendulkar hit a famous century to hunt down the target of 387 runs and dedicated his hundred to the nation.
This emotional victory was only the beginning of a series of victories that continued for the next 6 years, as under Dhoni’s leadership, India lost just one Test series at home – against England in 2012. Barring South Africa, every other visiting Test nation was beaten by the Dhoni’s men and in the process, he led India to the numero uno position in the ICC Test rankings.
Australia were clean swept twice – 2-0 in 2010-11 and 4-0 in 2013 – while New Zealand were humbled in their own backyard in 2009.
However, as good as Dhoni's accomplishments were in India, his records outside India weren't anywhere close. Dhoni also saw the team being whitewashed in back to back away tours – against England (4-0) in 2011 and Australia (4-0) in 2011-12. The following tours to these nations were also lost – against England in 2014 (3-1) and against Australia in 2014-15 (2-0).
Dhoni nurtured the current crop of Indian cricketers as well as saw the blossoming of the batting heavyweights – in Tendulkar, Dravid, VVS Laxman, Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir. The likes of Virat Kohli, Ajinkya Rahane, Murali Vijay, Cheteshwar Pujara and Ravichandran Ashwin made their debuts under Dhoni and are now the heavyweights of the Indian Test team.
Harbhajan Singh reached 400 Test wickets, Gambhir became the No. 1 Test batsman in the ICC Rankings, and Tendulkar reached the milestone of 100 international hundreds under Dhoni.
However, these successes have taken a bit of the sheen away from the prime reason due to which Dhoni was picked to play for India in the first place - his wicket-keeping. Dhoni has the 5th highest number of dismissals in Tests by a wicket-keeper – 294 – which includes 256 catches and 38 stumpings.
#3 Rahul Dravid
India’s most dependable cricketer of the modern era and the second highest aggregate run scorer in Tests for India, Rahul Dravid, had a legacy of his own. Whether it was his copybook technique, sessions after sessions of patience, or his humility outside the cricket field, Dravid was a true ambassador of the game in every which way.
Having made a memorable debut at Lord’s alongside Sourav Ganguly, scoring 95 runs in his first ever international innings, the seeds of a promising batsman were sown then and there.
Unlike other Indian Test captains, Dravid was bestowed with the leadership responsibility quite late in his career – almost after a decade of making his Test debut. The right-hander had led the team in the absence of Sourav Ganguly at times, but it was only in 2005 that he was made the full-time captain of the team.
Dravid’s moments of glory came in two away tours – against England and West Indies – as he led the Indian team to series victories in the aforementioned nations. Having said that, the importance of those victories should also be mentioned.
The Test series that India won in the West Indies in 2006-07, was only their second Test series win in the Caribbean, with the first one having been achieved as far back as in 1971. It was after 25 years that India managed to beat the Windies in their own den, and Dravid was the man who led them to it.
Similarly, the series win in England in 2007 also came after a gap of 20 years, as the last time that an Indian team had won a Test series there was in 1986 when Kapil Dev led the team to a 2-0 victory, winning back to back Tests – at Lord’s and Headingley.
Also, it was under Rahul Dravid that India won their first ever Test match on South African soil when they defeated the Proteas by 123 runs. Although India lost the next two Tests, and with it, the series, it was one of the most fiercely contested Test series between the two countries.
On his way to 13288 runs, Dravid oversaw the emergence of several youngsters under his leadership, and at the same time, saw the established cricketers take giant strides in their respective careers.
The incumbent Indian limited-overs captain, MS Dhoni, made his Test debut in 2005 under Dravid's captaincy and prospered in the longest format of the game during his infant years, between 2005- 2007, while S Sreesanth, Munaf Patel, and RP Singh had their short yet impressive bursts in Test cricket under Dravid’s captaincy.
#2 Sourav Ganguly
Every international cricket team has had its phases. Phases when everything goes right, and phases when nothing does. The once mighty West Indies have gone through a terrible phase over the past two decades and now languish amongst the bottom placed teams in the Test setup.
South Africa, who until 2015 where the top-ranked Test nation, have also seen an abysmal slide over the past 12 months or so.
India to be quite honest, were undergoing a similar phase between late 1999 and early 2000. India had been clean swept by Australia down under, and by South Africa at home, and the emergence of the spot-fixing activities that tarnished the image of Indian cricket and saw the alleged involvements of the then stalwarts like Mohammad Azharuddin and Ajay Jadeja, had left Indian cricket poorer and the fans heartbroken.
It was then that the selectors put their faith in a Bengal-born left-hander, Sourav Ganguly, to lead the Indian cricket team.
The results were immediately on display as Ganguly started his captaincy tenure with one of the greatest Test series wins in the history of Indian cricket. In 2001, Australia came to India after having whitewashed the subcontinental nation at home. After losing the 1st Test in Mumbai, the hosts came back from behind winning the second Test at Kolkata after being asked to follow-on by the visitors.
VVS Laxman’s 281 and Rahul Dravid’s 180 changed the game on its head after Australia had scored 445 in the 1st innings and had bowled out India for 171. India declared their 2nd innings at 657/7 thereby setting the visitors a target of 384 runs, which they fell short of by 171 runs.
Harbhajan Singh grabbed 13 wickets in that match including a hat-trick in the 1st innings. That was the beginning of another era of home dominance post the traumatic times that had befallen upon the team at the turn of the century, as India lost just 1 home Test series in the next five years – against Australia in 2004.
But, it was more than just for these victories that Ganguly’s captaincy was remembered for. India had become an irrelevant Test playing nation away from home over the past 10 years, as neither of the previous two Test captains – Sachin Tendulkar and Mohammad Azharuddin – could manage to win India a series outside the subcontinent.
The series defeats didn’t hurt as much as the inability of the Indian team to win a single Test outside the subcontinent between 1990 and 2000. That’s one decade of a winless streak.
All of this changed when Ganguly took the reins, and although he could only manage series victories against Zimbabwe – the streak was finally broken in 2001 when India defeated Zimbabwe at Bulawayo – outside the subcontinent, the tours to England and Australia of 2002-03 and 2003-04 respectively saw India play some brilliant counter-attacking cricket and drew both of those series 1-1 (4 Tests).
All of India’s batting heavyweights scored heavily during those two tours. Sachin Tendulkar scored a memorable 193, and Ganguly and Dravid followed him with centuries of their own at Headingley to help India beat England in England for the first time since 1986, while Dravid and VVS Laxman owned the Adelaide Oval to give India their first Test victory in Australia since 1987.
In 2002, India won a Test in the West Indies for the first time since 1975 under Ganguly’s captaincy.
#1 Ajit Wadekar
At the numero uno position in the list enumerating the best Indian Test captains is the man who made India taste success against the best in the world – who were at their own imperious best during the time – away from home.
If MAK Pataudi had taught the team that they could win Test matches at the international level, Ajit Wadekar took that confidence, that inspiration and oversaw India create history, as it was under his leadership that India won their first ever Test series against England and the West Indies in 1971.
It wasn’t just in those victories that his greatness lay, but rather, in his ability to help the side draw Test matches from precarious situations and thereby win the series.
It must also be remembered that India, back in 1971, didn’t have the luxuries of established Test batsmen. In fact, India themselves weren’t an established Test nation by then. The likes of Sunil Gavaskar, Gundappa Vishwanath, S Venkatraghavan and BS Bedi had either made their debuts or were in the formative years of their career.
Wadekar took the team that had only started to find its footing amongst the greats and took it to unprecedented success. Gavaskar scored a record 774 runs in his debut series in 1971 against the Windies under Wadekar’s captaincy, while Dilip Sardesai scored 2 centuries and a double century in the same series.
This kind of a run-fest against a side that was led by Garfield Sobers and had the likes of Clive Lloyd and Roy Fredricks in their midst was simply magical. India won the five-Test series 1-0.
The story in England the same year had a similar script to it. The spin trio of Venkatraghavan, Chandrasekhar and Bedi was in its menacing best, as Chandra picked up 8 wickets in India’s series-clinching 3rd Test at the Oval in August. England were beaten, once again, in their return tour to India in 1972-73 with Chandrasekhar, Bedi, and Prasanna running through the English ranks.
Wadekar made India believe that winning just Test matches isn't enough. He instilled the need and the habit of winning consistently away from home, something that made the lives much easier for the leaders who followed him post 1974.
Sunil Gavaskar has time and again hailed him as one of then greatest captains to have led the Indian Cricket Team, and there are plenty of reasons, as stated above, for such an assertion.
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