Why Andrew Strauss shows MS Dhoni's captaincy in such good light

Andrew Strauss

Andrew Strauss retired yesterday. Strauss is a good egg, a decent chap. He has been a fine player and captain, has served cricket well. It is sad that he is retiring.

What made Strauss' retirement even sadder was the timing of his announcement. It came a day after England were crushed by South Africa, with the batting crumbling yet again. Kevin Pietersen hammered a century for Surrey that day, to highlight what might have been but for the rift between the English captain and his best player. Strauss and the England management didn't want to talk about KP. The media clearly did, understandably so, because the KP melodrama highlights both the best and worst thing about Strauss' captaincy.

Strauss' greatest achievement, and his greatest weakness, is that he built a team in his own image. Strauss is a diligent, hard-working, respectful, determined, virtuous, fair-minded guy who puts the team's interests above his own. Andy Flower shares his personality. Strauss and Flower have built a team that values and develops players with Strauss' temperament - like Cook, Trott, Prior and Bresnan - whose game is built around discipline and professionalism. I'm naturally sympathetic to this approach. It feels proper and just that the Protestant (or Tam Bram) ethic should pay off, will pay off.

Unfortunately, this is simply not true. All international cricket is now very professional. Paradoxically, that means discipline and professionalism are no longer differentiators. The difference between competent teams and great teams comes down to a handful of geniuses with outrageous god-given gifts. Some of these favourites of the gods - like Muralitharan and Tendulkar - are nice guys who generally share Strauss' ethos. But the gods are capricious. A disproportionate number of the players the gods have bestowed the greatest gifts on - Shane Warne, Chris Gayle, Shoaib Akthar, Yuvraj Singh, Freddy Flintoff, Kevin Pietersen - are egoistic prima donnas.

I can imagine that it is really hard to be on the same team as arrogant superstars: travelling together, sharing a dressing room, sharing meals, year after year. However, a team needs great players more than it needs unity. Bob Woolmer's first action when he became Pakistan's coach was to bring back Shahid Afridi and Shoaib Akthar, which surely wasn't easy for captain Inzamam-ul-Haq, but it was the right thing to do. Leading a cricket team (at any level, actually) is about holding together a naturally fractious coalition. I'm sure Strauss knows this intellectually, but unfortunately for him, that part of the job didn't quite work out.

By contrast, the captain who has done brilliantly at this aspect of captaincy is MS Dhoni.

MS Dhoni with former captain Saurav Ganguly

In a way, Dhoni was dealt a much tougher hand than Strauss. Every team he has led has been chock a block with galacticos. He became captain unexpectedly, when Rahul Dravid resigned after winning a test series in England. In his first test match as captain he was leading Tendulkar, Ganguly, Dravid, Laxman, Kumble, Harbhajan and Zaheer (I don't remember why Sehwag wasn't playing). Each of these players was already a legend in his own right, Dhoni's natural seniors in life and in cricket. Dhoni didn't try to impose his style or method on them. He accepted them as they were - from Dravid's gentlemanliness to Harbhajan's in-your-face aggro - and the grace and charm with which he did that somehow enhanced his authority.

Over time, his task didn't get easier. He has had to manage Yuvraj, Sreesanth, Munaf, Kohli - difficult characters all. He has had to deal with the selectors, the sponsors, the media. MSD has been up to the task every time. I wish I knew how he does it. Regardless, in the frenetic world of Indian cricket, brimming over with outsize egos and chips-on-shoulders, Dhoni's contribution as captain cool has been huge, dwarfing his substantial contribution as a keeper, batsman and tactician.   

Gilcrist caught Strauss bowled Flintoff circa 2005

Looking back on Strauss' career, the English media are going on about his back-to-back Ashes triumphs as a captain. My favourite Strauss moments actually feature him as a player: his catch at Trent Bridge to dismiss Adam Gilchrist in the 2005 Ashes, his century at Wankhede in 2006 to set up England's first test match win in India in twenty years, and his back to back centuries at Chepauk in 2008 (under KP's captaincy) in what turned out to be a losing cause. I'd be very happy to buy Straussy a whiskey-sour at the bar, or a Jagermeister if he so prefers, to raise a toast to those moments.

England's next test match series is in India. As a partisan India supporter, I am not unhappy that Strauss the batsman will not be in the squad. And I'd be delighted if the England management take a "principled" stance and decide to tour India without Pietersen. I'm sure our team would rather be bowling at James Taylor and Johnny Bairstow.