Being a captain of a cricket team is a great honour, but that honour comes with a great level of responsibility. Captaining a cricket team isn’t like captaining a football team, and it definitely isn’t similar to being the captain of your school debate team. It comes with much more pressure, and all of the other players on your team will be looking for you to be a real leader in tense moments.
Cricket captains are basically half way between a coach and a player. A good captain will assist his coach with picking the team as well as the batting order, and act as the coach on the field once the game is taking place. They will help to keep the team motivated, and will formulate plans of attack in order to deal with the opposing team batsmen. To put it simply, cricket captains are one of the most integral parts of the success of a cricket team.
In this post, I’m going to share 14 tips that will help you to become the best captain you can possibly be. To put together this list I’ve done a lot of research on the art of captaincy, and studied a lot of the international cricket captains that I’ve admired the most in my years watching cricket. If you can put all of the tips into action, you can be sure that you will command the respect of your team mates and create a much more success orientated atmosphere within your team.
So how can you become a great cricket captain? I’d recommend following these tips:
- Project Authority & Confidence
- Maintain a Cool Head Under Pressure
- Make Sure You Have a Good Knowledge of the Rules of Cricket
- Learn How to be an Expert Communicator
- Lead From the Front With Solid Individual Performances
- Display a Good Level of Professionalism
- Be Prepared to Experiment with Innovative Tactics
- Be Flexible in Your Approach
- Encourage Your Team Mates
- Keep Yourself in the Thick of the Action
- Provide Feedback – Positive or Negative
- Be Prepared to Listen to Advice
- Know the Strengths & Weaknesses of Your Team
- Monitor the Performance of Your Team Mates
I’ll now walk you through each of these tips individually, explaining why they are important and the specific things you should be trying to do in order to achieve them.
Project Authority & Confidence
As a captain it’s incredibly important to display positive body language and to be able to inspire confidence within your team mates. You want to be a motivational influence, that makes your team believe they can win no matter what situation they are in. A captain that can inspire their players to keep fighting even when things look lost is a great captain in my view.
If you want to project authority and confidence towards your team mates, keep the following things in mind:
Keep Eye Contact – When you’re in the dressing room giving your team a pep talk, when you’re in the huddle prior to going out in the field, and when you’re on the field dictating where each fielder needs to be placed, make sure you keep eye contact with them at all times. Keeping eye contact demonstrates confidence, whereas nervously looking around the room or around the field portrays uneasiness. Eye contact also shows people that you are fully focused on the task at hand, rather than being distant, and shows each individual that you are listening to what they are saying, which is an important aspect of communication. If you want to build a solid connection with your team mates, this is one of the first things you should be doing in order to achieve it.
Speak Clearly & Relatively Loudly – If you’re a captain, you need to be able to command a huddle and deliver a message to your team clearly and efficiently. In order to deliver this message in an easy to understand way, we should aim to speak with a volume that will allow the rest of our team to hear us, and ensure we are speaking clearly. Many young people have a tendency to speak quietly, too fast, or mumble their way through speech because they aren’t confident in what they’re saying. The sooner you can get out of this habit, the better! Your team will be looking for you to guide them, so remember to speak loudly and deliver a clear, cogent message.
Don’t Shy Away From Leading Discussions Or Dealing With Issues – As the captain, you should be the person primarily responsible for dealing with disputes within the team, or deciding angles of attack when out on the field. You can ask for your team mates advice, but make sure you don’t remove yourself from these discussions entirely. If you remove yourself from the decision-making process of the team, people may start to wonder why you’re the captain at all!
Use Power Positions – When you’re in the cricket environment, be that on the field, in the dressing room, or during practice, you should try to adopt powerful body positions that help you to demonstrate self-assurance and confidence. Examples of power positions are standing up straight, and pushing your chest forwards slightly with your shoulders back. These simple body language tricks can help a ton! Power positions like these can make us seem more assertive to people we are playing with.
Maintain A Cool Head Under Pressure
If you’re the captain of a fielding side and the opposition batsmen are getting on top of your bowlers, it’s easy to lose your composure and become rattled. However, if there is one person that cannot allow themselves to lose their composure, it is you! You set the example for your team, and you’re the person that your bowlers and fielders will be looking at as an example, so if they see you getting unsettled it is likely that this will begin to affect the way that they play.
In tense moments at the end of an innings, it’s easy to become distracted by nerves, and thoughts of failure. To remove these feelings, you should aim to share a clear plan of how you are going to win the game with your team mates. This helps to keep your players’ minds focused on what they have to do to succeed and achieve a win, rather than letting them be consumed by nerves. While you are sharing this plan it’s vital that you stick to the points I gave you in the section above. You should be speaking loudly and clearly and making proper eye contact. This will help to instil a feeling within your team mates that you have the situation under control.
If you really start to feel stressed, take a few long and deep breaths to calm yourself down. Breathing in this way helps to stop your body producing stress hormones and helps you to relax. Also, in these moments you should really try to emphasise the positives of the game situation, rather than the negatives. For example, if the opposition need 10 runs off the last 6 balls of the innings and they have a batsman who is on a hot streak of hitting boundaries all over the field, it is not a good idea to remind your bowlers how dangerous this batsman is, or how unlikely it is that you will be able to win the game. Instead, remind your bowlers that they have achieved similar things before and that it will only take one good delivery to get the batsman out! Positive messaging rather than negative messaging is a useful tactic for remaining cool under pressure.
Make Sure You Have a Good Knowledge of the Rules of Cricket
A captain needs to be able to keep up with what is going on in the game, and as a result you will need to have a good knowledge of many of the basic rules. For example, in a T20 match, a captain will need to know that none of their bowlers is allowed to bowl more than 4 overs. If the number of overs that each bowler has bowled isn’t monitored throughout the innings, you could end up with one of your weaker bowlers bowling at the death of the innings – which isn’t desirable!
Captains will also have to have a knowledge of rules regarding field placings. An example is the rule that says there cannot be more than two fielders behind square on the leg side of the batsman as the ball is bowled. If a captain doesn’t know this rule and stations more fielders in that area than is permitted, they could cost their team valuable runs in terms of a no ball.
Knowledge of the rules becomes even more important as an international cricket captain. Since the review system was introduced to cricket, captains are under even more pressure to understand the ins and outs of the LBW laws, and make split second judgements on whether the opposing batsman is going to be given out on review or not. In addition to the review system, here are just a few more things that international cricket captains must be aware of the rules on:
- Required over rates
- The Duckworth Lewis Stern method and rain affected matches
- Powerplays and additional fielding restrictions
- Free hits
- Ball changes
If you’re aiming to captain your team in the future, I’d recommend watching plenty of cricket and consuming as much cricket related content as you can. I’d also recommend checking out some of my other posts on this site, like this one that covers all of the different fielding positions in cricket! By doing these things, you’ll pick up certain rules of the game without having to actually sit down and read the ICC rule books! A captain who knows the cricket rule book inside out will be a better prepared captain, and preparation is key to success on the field.
Learn How to be an Expert Communicator
Cricket teams feature a wide range of personalities. At some point in our careers I bet we’ve all encountered the fiery, short-tempered fast bowler, the quiet and thoughtful opening batsman, as well as the eccentric and wild spin bowler. These are just a few cricket stereotypes, but the list of potential personalities is endless. As a captain, your job is to manage all of these different personalities and get the best possible performance out of each player, and you may have to use different approaches and methods of communication for each individual.
I remember Nasser Hussain talking about this when he was discussing his time as England captain. All of his fast bowlers had very different personalities, and would respond better to different forms of communication. Andrew Caddick was a bowler that would require a lot of encouragement in order to bowl at his best. He would perform a lot better when the captain would give him a few pats on the back and tell him he believed in him. However, when trying to motivate some of his other bowlers such as Dominic Cork or Darren Gough, Nasser would try to get them worked up and make them a little angry. This anger would be released towards the batsman during their spell of bowling, which often resulted in wickets. All captains should aim to get to know their players in this way, so that they know which communication techniques to use to get each player to perform at a higher level.
Try sitting down and having a conversation with each of your bowlers/players, and ask them how they think you can help them to succeed in their role. If they think there is a certain thing you can do, or a certain way that you can act that is going to help them, then you should think about adopting that strategy. Some players prefer no input at all! Tailor your communication to suit each individual and your players will respond better to you, allowing your team to play better as a result.
Lead From the Front With Solid Individual Performances
As cricketers we should always be trying to perform to the best of our ability every time we take the field. If you’re a bowler, you should always be aiming to stop the opposing batsmen from scoring and to take wickets while doing it. If you’re a batsman, you should always be aiming to put together big scores that will lay the platform for your team to secure a win. If you’re a captain, then you should be trying even harder to maintain a good level of performance.
Obviously, being a captain will not be your first job within the team. You will have got picked originally because you were a good batsman, a good bowler, or a good all-rounder. If you lose your form in these areas, then your captaincy may suffer as a result. For example, a captain who opens the batting may find themselves feeling less authoritative in the dressing room if they haven’t made a good score all season, because they know they are not helping the team win as much as they should be. Contrast this with a captain who opens the batting who has scored three centuries in their last ten innings. This captain will be brimming with confidence, and fully ready to lead from the front and command the dressing room.
Being a batsman in cricket is a tough job, and it can be made tougher when you’re appointed captain of your team. This can lead to additional stresses being placed on you, and these stresses might distract you from your number one role in the side, which is to score runs. The best captains are ones who can totally separate their role as a batsman/bowler from their role as leader of the team. Doing this allows you to focus on one task at a time, but it does require a good level of mental strength! I’d recommend continuing to work just as hard (if not harder) on your batting or bowling, as this will ensure you are able to keep performing well in those areas. From there, your captaincy should feel a lot more stress-free.
Display a Good Level of Professionalism
For years cricket has been referred to as ‘the gentleman’s game’ because of the respect that is shared between the officials, the opponents and the fans, and as a captain I believe we have an obligation to continue those respectful traditions.
Again, as captain you can influence your team to be respectful of your opposition, the officials and the fans by leading from the front. Before the game begins, seek out the opposition captain and shake hands with them. This handshake, alongside a brief chat can help to establish a healthy competitive relationship between the two teams, rather than an unhealthy one, and I believe this is the spirit in which cricket should be played. In addition to shaking hands with the captain, go find the umpires and introduce yourself to them whilst shaking hands. Let them know that you’ll be available to speak to them if there are any issues they need to resolve. This helps you to establish a positive relationship with the umpires prior to the match, which is never a bad thing!
When the match is over, make sure you and your team are all out on the field to shake hands with the opposition and the umpires. Win lose or draw, it’s incredibly important that we show respect to our opposition in the same way we would like them to show respect for us!
I think anyone who watches cricket will know that while a match is ongoing, it can sometimes get very heated out in the middle. The fielding side will often be trying to distract the batsman and get in their head by ‘sledging’ them. Sledging is a broad term, but in a cricket sense it basically refers to the way we will use words to try and get a batsman out of their comfort zone. As a captain, it’s important that you don’t let your team cross the line with their verbal attacks. Criticising the technique, skills and ability of a batsman is fine, but try not to let this descend into personal attacks such as commentary on how a batsman looks, or a batsman’s personal life. In my opinion, this doesn’t really have anything to do with the sport of cricket and I would rather not have to resort to these kinds of tactics in order to win the game.
Be Prepared to Experiment with Innovative Tactics
Some batsmen are harder to get out than others, and as a result captains and bowlers will have to get inventive in order to create a plan capable of dismissing them. By coming up with new methods of attack, we can get the batsman out of their comfort zone and force them into mistakes.
For example, if your fast bowlers have been attacking a certain batsman by bowling outside their off stump for their entire innings and this has not worked, it may be time to change tactic. Instead you could test out the batsman against short pitched deliveries by putting two fielders behind square on the leg side and bowling bouncers at them. You could also put a fielder at short leg so the batsman will find it harder to fend off short pitched deliveries that cause them problems. This is just one example of a fresh, innovative tactic you can try. Here are some more:
Place Fielders In Unusual Positions
The example that I like to use to explain this one comes from the Ashes series in 2005. Matthew Hayden was an incredibly dangerous Australian opening batsman, and England captain Michael Vaughan used some strange field placings to try and unsettle him. The best example of this was the short mid-off that he used from the second over of the innings. You can see this fielder circled in the photo below! England’s theory was that positioning the fielder here would disrupt Hayden’s vision slightly due to him being able to see the fielder in the corner of his eye as the bowler was running in. It was also a genius move because Hayden was prone to driving the ball in the air in this area. This made it a lot more dangerous for him to play the shot! It also forced Hayden to try to drive the ball a bit squarer through the off side rather than straight down the ground, and with Hoggard swinging the ball in towards him this was very dangerous.
England’s tactics against Hayden obviously worked, as he was only able to average 35 in the whole series. This was much lower than his career average of 50!
Bring The Keeper Up To The Stumps
Some batsmen love to advance down the wicket to fast bowlers, and some will even stand outside their crease before the bowler has delivered the ball. They do these things in order to try and disrupt the bowler’s length, as well as getting themselves a bit closer to the pitch of the ball. This makes it easier to hit boundaries.
If you notice a batsman doing this, you may want to tell your wicket keeper to move themselves up closer to the stumps. By doing this, the batsman will be a lot more reluctant to come down the wicket or stand outside of their ground as they are risking being stumped if they miss the ball! A simple little move like this can make it much harder for batsmen to score freely.
Use Your Part-Time Bowlers
After a long period of facing the same 4/5 bowlers, a batsman may have gotten comfortable and feel fully in control. Sometimes giving the ball to a part-time bowler can lull the batsman into a false sense of security and cause lapses in their concentration, leading to them getting out! I’ve lost count of the number of times over the years that a captain has given the ball to a part-time spinner, and that spinner has ended up getting a vital wicket! A lot of set batsmen will see a less-skilled bowler come into the attack, and immediately start to play more aggressively, which can open up opportunities for your team.
To sum up this section, captains who are innovative will always keep an opposition batsman on their toes. Therefore, you should always be looking for new tactics that will make batsmen think outside the box. Make sure you watch plenty of cricket on TV and stay up to date with the latest trends.
Encourage Your Team Mates
A bit of encouragement here and there is never a bad thing, and if you’re a captain you should always be encouraging your team mates and asking them to do the same thing for each other. Encouragement helps to build positive vibes within the team, and can create an intimidating atmosphere for a batsman to walk into. As your bowlers are getting ready to bowl, try to make sure that the rest of your fielders are being nice and loud and shouting words of encouragement and clapping. This is especially important during tense periods of the game.
You should also be aiming to build an encouraging atmosphere in the dressing room and during practice. This helps to psyche your batsmen up before they go out to bat, and also builds confidence in players during practice.
If you can work to build a positive & encouraging team environment then you’re more likely to attract better players to your team. Your players are also more likely to want to play harder for you, so you will get better performances as a result!
Keep Yourself In The Thick Of The Action
This tip is simple, but it will make you a much more effective captain. Basically, when your team is fielding, you should always make sure that you’re close enough to the centre of the field so that your bowlers and the rest of your fielders can hear your instructions. If you position yourself on the boundary, this would be hugely impractical as you would have to shout your instructions to the rest of the team! This may lead to them misunderstanding you, which wouldn’t be ideal!
Captains will usually place themselves in a position like 1st or 2nd slip, or mid-off/mid-on. Mid-off is probably the most common position, because it is basically right next to where the bowler will be. This allows them to communicate with the bowler directly as well as speaking to the rest of the fielders. By keeping yourself close to the action, you will have a better view of the field and be able to move people around quickly and efficiently.
Provide Feedback – Positive Or Negative
You should always aim to give feedback to your players, regardless of whether that feedback is positive or negative. This will help them to know whether they’ve done a good job or a bad job, and whether they need to adjust their approach in the future.
Great moments to deliver your feedback are after a bowler has finished their over, after an innings has finished, after the game has ended and during practice. If your feedback is bad, try not to deliver it in a way that is too harsh. Instead, try to focus on what the player can do to improve for next time.
Holding players accountable through feedback is a great way of giving them things to work on, and it ensures that each individual is always trying to improve their skills. That can only benefit your team in the long run! Keep in mind that your players will much more accepting of your feedback and criticisms if you have a better relationship with them, so make sure you really try to work on that!
Be Prepared To Listen To Advice
Great captains will always have a few trusted advisors beneath them that they can consult with on important issues. The England cricket team that I grew up watching had Michael Vaughan as captain, but Vaughan had several key senior advisors with plenty of cricket experience. This was guys like Marcus Trescothick, Graham Thorpe, Andrew Flintoff and Ashley Giles – to name just a few.
Having a group of experienced individuals in your team that you have good relationships with can be massively beneficial to your captaincy. There will probably be times when you overlook something, or when you need a bit of inspiration from somewhere, and these kinds of people can assist you in those tough times.
Ideally, the kind of relationship you will build with these players is one where they do not feel afraid to question you or to suggest new approaches to you. But you also must not be afraid to ignore their advice and do things the way you want them to be done. You are the captain of the team, and the final say must always be yours!
Know The Strengths & Weaknesses Of Your Team
Knowing the strengths and weaknesses of your own team is important from a game planning perspective, and it will help you develop a method of winning cricket matches.
Most cricket teams will have some things that they do better than others. For example, some may feel better when batting first and getting a good score, and then using their spinners in their bowling innings to squeeze the opposition. Some teams may have particularly strong top order hitters that want to get first use of the pitch! And some teams may have an unbelievably strong bowling attack and will prefer to bowl first and get the opposing team out cheaply, before easily knocking off the winning runs. It is your job as captain to know what the strengths of your team are, so you know whether to bat or bowl in certain conditions.
You can only learn these things through experience and properly seeing how your team performs in various match/practice scenarios. Take particular note of who is performing well in practice. If you have a fearsome crop of fast bowlers at your disposal, it may be in your interest to bowl first the majority of the time. This will help to cover up your team’s batting deficiencies. You will also know which bowlers should be bowling at certain times. Some bowlers love bowling at the start of an innings, but aren’t as effective at the death. If you notice you have a bowler like this, you can arrange your overs so that bowler doesn’t have to bowl at the end of the innings. It is a captain’s job to notice these things and try to help the team succeed in spite of them.
Another example is the batting order. If you have two openers that have built a solid platform for your innings, and your number 3 batsman is more of an accumulator of runs rather than a fast scoring player, you may wish to elevate one of your lower order batsmen that is more of a powerful striker of the ball to number 3. Australia regularly do this with Steve Smith in T20 matches. If Aaron Finch and David Warner get them off to a flying start, they are more likely to bring a guy like Glenn Maxwell in at number 3 since a platform has been laid. Knowing the strengths and weaknesses of each player in your team can help you put yourselves in a position to secure a win.
Monitor The Performance Of Your Team Mates
As a captain you will be partly in charge of picking the team alongside your coach, and as a result you’ll have to keep a close eye on the performance of your team mates in net sessions and during practices. If you have some players who aren’t performing at a satisfactory level, you may wish to bring in another player who you feel could perform better. This happens more in professional cricket rather than in amateur cricket, but captains still must be prepared to take tough selection decisions in order to benefit the team.
Certain players may be performing very well in practice and making great improvements, and as a result you may wish to elevate them up the batting order to give them more opportunities to score. Similarly, if you see improvement in the skills of a bowler, you may wish to let that bowler open the bowling or let them bowl more overs.
Sometimes, the older, more experienced player is not always the player to pick. Prior to the 2005 Ashes series, England captain Michael Vaughan faced a tough decision on whether to pick the veteran test player Graham Thorpe (who had been one of England’s best players for a decade) or go with Kevin Pietersen, a young up and coming star who was uncapped at test level. Vaughan had been watching Pietersen in the county game and also in the one-day international side, and as a result he felt that Kevin Pietersen would help England regain the Ashes. In the end, he was proven right as Pietersen played a leading role in the series win. By monitoring the players closely, Vaughan was able to make a tough but brilliant decision, and that is something you should be looking to emulate.
Conclusion
Hopefully this post has given you a solid insight into the mind of a successful cricket captain. In future posts I will go into more detail regarding the tactical side of captaincy, but it is more than just tactics that make a great captain.
In my opinion, the number one focus of your captaincy should be people management. If you can successfully co-operate with the players around you, then you can elevate the performance of any team beyond what it would usually be. Work on building good relationships with the players in your team and you will find your job much easier and a lot more enjoyable!
