Why Australia Never Had Shane Warne As Captain.

When the Royals won the first IPL season, the pundits wasted no time in pointing out that Shane Warne was the best captain that Australia never had. They waxed eloquence about his tactical acumen and his extraordinary ability to get something out of a bunch of unknowns. But anybody willing to look beyond the haze could easily see that the bunch of unknowns were infact competent performers in their own rite, who would have performed under any captain with a little bit of balls. While the batting revolved around Shane Watson and the hot-cold Yusuf Pathan, the bowling was spearheaded by Sohail Tanvir. Young Jadeja was a star in the making, who is now a regular in the Indian ODI side. To be fair it should also be noted that Warnie infact tried to lead by example. He wasn’t afraid to show his affection and support to young players, by putting his arm around them when they were being carted around. When the heat was on he exuded a sense of control rather than resorting to screaming or biting nails endlessly, a skill likely acquired at the poker table rather than on a cricket pitch. When he talked about helping the youngsters in the team, he did project a sense of sincerity that wasn’t really seen in him before.

All being said and done, the next two seasons showed why he wasn’t really the kind of captain that Australia was looking for. With the 2009 season about to unfold in South Africa, Warne was still busy trying his luck at the poker table. If one is to talk about distractions and poor team preparations before the start of a season, then one doesn’t need to look beyond that incident. Another troubling aspect is his apparent favouritism shown in getting his friends aboard at the expense of the team goals. A case in point is the signing of Damien Martyn while letting go of Jadeja (all though it seems Jadeja is partly to be blamed). Martin is an elegant batsman all right, but his acquisition, well after his retirement seems more like Warnie giving his friend a retirement gift of $100k while he still has some influence with the Royals management. Signing up Darren Lehmann in 2008 was another such example. The dude was so out of shape, it was hilarious to see him painfully moving around the field and then dropping an absolute sitter in one of the matches. He sat out the remaining games and then was let go. All that money spent on him was an absolute waste. It would have been better spent on a youngster like Jadeja that actually made some contribution. Apparently this hasn’t gone unnoticed – check this cricinfo article.

One reason why the Australians were the number one team for such a long time, was due to the administrators being able to pick the right captain. They always backed the right horse, by selecting somebody with a stable private life and a reasonable amount of intelligence, rather than their best player. They fully knew the repercussions of having a captain who’s a tabloid sensation. All though Warnie had a tendency to spin tabloid headlines with his less than impressive behaviour off the field, I doubt it was the only reason why he was denied the captaincy, especially given the fact that he never allowed his off field troubles and behaviour affect his performance. I believe his trash talking personality, his lack of discipline and commitment to team goals may have also played a role. One could argue the above examples from IPL is not a good indication of how he may have behaved had he been the captain of Australia instead of a high profile domestic team. But then again IPL has very high exposure and commands the same amount of following as high profile international matches.

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