May sound unfair but, who do you think are the worst test captains ever ?

My Top ( or bottom ) 3 choices:

1. Moin Khan: Couldnt win in the Windies and due to lack of basic captaincy skills, lost us the match in Karachi against Eng!!

2. Mike Gatting: No victories of repute, instead a confrontation with Shakoor Rana!!! Probably the most disliked cricketer from England and the target of "that" ball from Shane Warne !

3. Kim Hughes: a crying shame ? From CricInfo:

he was a luckless captain during the 1981 "Botham's Ashes" series, and a hapless target during his final four Test innings, which brought him only two runs. Identified with the cause of the Board by former Packer signatories, Hughes was only suffered by them as a skipper, and his tearful resignation at Brisbane in December 1984 after only four victories in 28 matches was one of that office's sorriest spectacles....


Of course a special mention to Bishen Singh Bedi who led India to Pak in 1978....

Your choices pls.

I may be wrong But I dont think Sachin won a series as test captian..

But did he lose a series for India due to some outrageuous choices/decisions ? I think he was an average captain - nothing stands out for or against him

Ummmmm I gues he didnt MIG, he was quite helpless he was a one man army...But still not wining even a series as captian is pretty bad. I dont think Lara has won a series as well.

I think in that dept Moin wins hands down ! He took a perfectly winnable series and ended up losing to England at home ! Can never forgive him for that !

i would agree with MIG on this one - he had likes of waqar and saqi in his prime at his disposal yet he some how led us to defeat

I believe a lot had to do with the way pitches were prepared - there was indecision in their composition, mirroring that in the mind of the team management.

We couldnt have seaming pitches, fearing English fast bowlers and niether could we have spinners due to fear of Giles !!!!!

Pathetic and to top it all , watching Nasser Hussain celebrating with Champagne at Iftaar Time in Karachi !

Hansie Cronje - because he held a team meeting to fix a game and he abused his position by involving his players to getting into corruption and match fixing.

Inzi

Chanderpaul

Sachin

Graeme Smith

Moin Khan

Inzi is your 2nd worst captain ? Elaborate pls

Inzi is your 2nd worst captain

Inzi has made many dumb decuisions but the mother of all his bad decisions has to be the one he made in New Zealand where spurned the additional eight overs on offer to claim the victory much to the surprise of the New Zealand players after everyone knew that the weather bureuia forecast heavy rains for the next day.


Only someone as dumb as Inzi could have made a blunder as big as this. @ hours after the end of play the next day it started raining and it rained until night

Did we lose that match Khalil ?

Hey lets not forget Alec Stewart

Did we lose that match Khalil ?


Inzi almost threw it away when the game was basically won the previous day.

Hansie Cronje - because he held a team meeting to fix a game and he abused his position by involving his players to getting into corruption and match fixing.

Inzi

Chanderpaul

Sachin

Graeme Smith

Moin Khan

Hi Khalil,
The guy is probably my LEAST favourite cricketer (if such a thing is possible) but please elaborate on why he's your worst captain? Maybe u've got sumpin' I can add to my list!

http://smileys.smileycentral.com/cat/23/im/tnx.gif (http://www.smileycentral.com/?partner=ZSzeb001_ZSYYYYYYYYMU)

Alec has always been such a good loser !! Never moaned about match conditions etc when he lost a match !

of all the ones i have seen

wiqi
inzi
ganguly

Inzi's not a bad captain, he doesnt make any bad decisions, he just lets things happen, so therefore and thus he can't be classified as a bad captain.

Just a correction, Tendulkar's won series against Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand as captain

Imran Khan
Steve Waugh
Wasim Akram

:26::3:

Ummmmm I gues he didnt MIG, he was quite helpless he was a one man army...But still not wining even a series as captian is pretty bad. I dont think Lara has won a series as well.

Small correction. Lara won his first ever series against England - both tests and ODIs. Also he won test series against Sri Lanka in 2003. Also against BD and Zimbabwe if they can be counted.
I am not sure if there are any and I am talking about test series here. Just a mention of that famous drawn series against Aus in 1999.

I think in that dept Moin wins hands down ! He took a perfectly winnable series and ended up losing to England at home ! Can never forgive him for that !

:12: :12: i agree moin khan is pakistans worst ever skip and inzi isnt that far behind interms of incompitence!

Khaled Mahmud, the previes Bangladesh captain prior to Habibul Bashir. I know you are the captain of Bangladesh but he was just way too negative and records fell against him right and left. Atleast under Habibiul there is some improvement by beating India and Australia, winning a test, and even being more competitive in tests(a draw against West Indies).

Hashan Tillkerante, SLs old test captain before Atapattu. This guy was just a idiot...period. Way too negative and did not have a clue where to set a field. Against England in 2003, when he had the chance to finish them off in the first two tests, England held on by one wicket each time. He has a guy on the boundary for god sakes when England had no chance of winning. He should have crowded the field around the bat, that is all they needed. Lucky he won the series 1-0, when he could have won it 3-0.

Moin Khan seems as an apt choice in the top 3.

Tendulkar was not so much a bad skipper as he was a thoroughly confused and burdened fellow whilst batting as his form plummetted after he was given the responsible mantle of captaincy. Seemed like a little boy lost in woods. Stark contrast with likes of Imran and Waugh who both just went from strength to strength relishing the added responsibility and authority. Separates the men from the boys.

Rameez Raja has to be there too. Never truly a team man and then to make this guy the skipper was asking too much of him really.

" Rameez Raja has to be there too. Never truly a team man and then to make this guy the skipper was asking too much of him really."

I think he also ruined the career of Zahid by over bowling him in extremely hot conditions!

Rameez Raja, Moin Khan, Amjid's Favorite:3: Wasim Bari (He's got to be the King of Bad captains), Graeme Smith who had no clue how to behave when Youhana was shouldered by Andrew Hall or how to control his team

Zaheer Abbas (although one my favorite batsmen, style wise) was quite impotent too

Greame Smith is a shocker. Whenever one of his bowlers gets hit for 4 he moves a fielder to cover the place where he hit it. The the batter hits another 4 to a different bit of the boundry he moves the same man to that part of the boundry. He is very bad.

WORST EVER Captains:


Inzamam-ul-Haq - no attacking instinct, poor man management, lets things drift, clueless in the field when the team is under attack, lack of inspiration, tactically very poor.
Moin Khan - his biggest let-down was that he thought he was being clever, but in reality his judgement was poor! I still maintain he had the right credentials. If he was given a longer run, he may have proved some of us wrong....but losing a series to Nasser Hussain's losers is not forgiveable!!
Tendulkar - no inspiration, created sectarian and religious divisions in the team - nothing to show for it
Chanderpaul - no command over the team, looks clueless in the field...

The recent series in WI was quite symobolic of the declining standards of cricket world wide. Shoddy in quality, and both teams led by tactically inept and clueless fellows.

In a way it was hard to decide who was worst - Inzamam or Chanders

2. Mike Gatting: No victories of repute, instead a confrontation with Shakoor Rana!!! Probably the most disliked cricketer from England and the target of "that" ball from Shane Warne !
1986/87 Ashes?

Agree with you about Moin & Hughes (the irony when he said Pak would lose to Aus in 3 days when he was the skipper when Imran dished out the 3-0 whitewash in '83 :5:), but give Inzi time, he has a decent record as captain, and in India his captaincy definitely improved.

1. Moin Khan - enough has been said
2. Tillekeratne - SL should have beat Eng 3-0 and his negative tactics meant England were able to draw.
3. Gooch - by their own admission, he was only captain because England had no one else.
4. Botham - great as a player (declined gradually) but absolutely rubbish as captain

Even tough I am not a big fan Inzy as a captain but I have to say this in his defenese. Farhad said about Imran and S Waugh that their performance as a cricketer improved day in day out when they were given additional responsibility of being a captain. If we see last year record Inzy have carried Pakistan batting all by himself with good support from a young team. In my opnion England Tour will decide that if Inzy has learned anything in last year in being captain. For now we should give him a benfit of doubt? One more thing I will like to add is that the title of this post is " Worst Captain Ever" so Inzy is still a captain and still have allot to prove so we cannot label him as Worst Captain Ever. You never know what future will bring ;)

jimmy adams cheated pakistan the last time we were in the carribian
ken ratharford ( nz captain after the 92 world cup)
sachin tandu (india's best is also the worst )
saeed anwar wasnt anywhere near great
jaisurya was found wanting as captain

Even tough I am not a big fan Inzy as a captain but I have to say this in his defenese. Farhad said about Imran and S Waugh that their performance as a cricketer improved day in day out when they were given additional responsibility of being a captain. If we see last year record Inzy have carried Pakistan batting all by himself with good support from a young team. In my opnion England Tour will decide that if Inzy has learned anything in last year in being captain. For now we should give him a benfit of doubt? One more thing I will like to add is that the title of this post is " Worst Captain Ever" so Inzy is still a captain and still have allot to prove so we cannot label him as Worst Captain Ever. You never know what future will bring ;)


Excellent post:14: :19:

In TESTS since October 2003 v SA (Inzi's 1st match as captain in this current stint) Inzi averages 59 with the bat which is 8.2 more than his career average!

In ODI's since September 2003 v Bang (1st match as captain this stint) Inzi averages 49.4 with the bat which is 9.5 more than his career average!

The above stats should show that Inzi is NOT THE WORST captain ever!

Chanderpaul is certainly one of the worst i have seen.

Ramiz raja
Shaun Pollock are pretty bad too.

I think he also ruined the career of Zahid by over bowling him in extremely hot conditions!

That is more or less myth.

Zaheer Abbas was a terrible skipper. The irony here was that he fought hard to get to the helm of affairs by all means, but when he did get his chance, he was clueless.

Ian Botham also has to be bracketed here. Not only was he a bad leader, his performances hit rock bottom when he was England's skipper.

I think measuring skippers by personal performances alone is a little misleading.

In which case, how do people rate:

1. Mike Brearley
2. Mushtaq Mohammed ?

Inzi 's test captaincy record

Played 13 , Won 5 Lost 5 SUCCESS - 50%

Pakistans test record since 2000
Played 44 won 14 Lost 19 Success 44.31 %
SO Inzi can not be our worst captain there are others before him to take the honours

Inzi is not that bad of a captain as people say he is. He is really maturing and getting better at the job. He was very positive in India, and West Indies was bit of a set back. He did not lose a game in the Windies(since he did not captain the first test). We have had worse captains than Inzi who barely survived 6 months.

MIG, are we talking about captains and their standard of captaincy/tactics or their standard of play/performace whilst being made captain ?

I think Saj - I just want to find out what most people consider a bad captain...

Seems that there can be many definitions - I suppose depends on how u look at it ?

One thing that Inzi does and continues to do so is underbowl Afridi. Someone who is a genuine wicket taker and at times has seemed a lot more effective than Kaneria but for some reason Inzi persisted with Kaneria. Hes not alone, Yoyo did the same in Australia in the 3rd Test.

Hashan Tillekeratne: Too defensive in mindset. Never did attack enough, never backed his batsmen - one incident stands out, when Sri Lanka needed to chase a target on the final day in about 40-odd overs at a run rate of almost 6 an over. As soon as Jayasuriya fell, Tillekeratne ordered his batsmen to shut up shop - lacked faith in the rest of the batting, one of the worst qualities of any captain.

Ian Botham: Too much of an ego and a prospensity to get all the media headlines/focus on him, and almost zero man-management skills.

B.S. Bedi: Very negative and critical attitude towards many players, poor decision-making and generally not the brightest chap to have led an Indian team.

Honorable mentions: Brian Lara (clueless at points as leader on what to do other than just rotate bowlers), Kim Hughes (ffs, you're an Aussie. QUIT CRYING.), Moin Khan (Wanted: Active brain cells!), Lee Germon (make a guy cappo on his test debut, because of his media skills. BRILLIANT.)

Tillekeratne has had so many shocking incidents. FOr me this incident defines his captaincy

Giles and some tailenders were batting. 5 or 6 overs to go with 2 or 3 wickets in hand and England needed 80 runs or so - were no where near a position to win. How did TillekerRATne respond? By putting 4 men out on the boundary.

When you see clowns like that, there is NO way that Inzi can be ranked among the 3 worst captains of all times.

Brearely is probably regarded as the best skipper ever, mainly due to 1981 Ashes. But there is no doubt he had a great cricketing brain and as my father says "us shakhs ko haq hai captaincy pey kitaab likhney ka" - with his 2 degrees from cambridge and straight into the England team from university.

Mushtaq Mohammad had his moments, we drew against WI and Australia, the two best team at the team, away under his captaincy - his 200 and 5 wickets in WI, and some great performances in Australia, mainly thanks to Imran and Sarfraz (9 wickets in an innings at Melbourne)

yes Sachin's form plummeted - average of 51 was desperate and 7 tons.

yes Sachin's form plummeted - average of 51 was desperate and 7 tons.

If he was doing so great, as his numbers suggest and like you implied, then why was he kicked out of the captaincy...especially after winning last 5 of the 6 tests:20:

I am sure there was something more then meets the eye

inzi is not one of the three worse captains ever!!!!

some might doubt inzi's capabilities as captain
but he has been our longest continously serving captain since Imran Khan


more over his win loss ratio in tests is head and shoulders above the over all record in this decade

WORST EVER Captains:


Inzamam-ul-Haq - no attacking instinct, poor man management, lets things drift, clueless in the field when the team is under attack, lack of inspiration, tactically very poor.
Moin Khan - his biggest let-down was that he thought he was being clever, but in reality his judgement was poor! I still maintain he had the right credentials. If he was given a longer run, he may have proved some of us wrong....but losing a series to Nasser Hussain's losers is not forgiveable!!
Tendulkar - no inspiration, created sectarian and religious divisions in the team - nothing to show for it
Chanderpaul - no command over the team, looks clueless in the field...



umm, care to expand on #3? I don't think you have any idea of what ur talking about...where does religion come into cricket?

Monsee, he was having problems with selectors trying to get a team of his choice. So he had to play with the team he didn't want, literally a B-Grade team, and how do you expect to win with that? He was tactically, an above average captain, even sometimes brilliant, but the captaincy was hampering him as a person cuz the defeats kept mounting with him being the main contributor with the bat, and the politics in indian cricket. He wasn't the best captain, but he wasn't the worst either. I think Farhad's personal bias is coming into play once again

Look guys - it was just Ayubis and Farhads and Monsees views on captains - You happen to like SRT so you are complaining - there is also a mention of Inzi in there and that of Chanderpaul - try and expand your horizons a bit. Not all arguments revolve around SRT being the best or the worst.

Also, I dont appreciate you getting personal with one poster ( Farhad ) ...

Lets stick to the subject of this thread else surely there are other threads to talk about.

men in green, who's complaining? Those guys made a point, I made a point. I do like SRT, and I also think he's not the worst captain around. By personal bias I mean that Farhad just doesn't like some, correction, most, correction, almost all Indian players...so he kinda has it out for them at certain points. I'm just defending the man, that's all. And getting personal? I'm sorry, I really fail to understand when and where I got personal? I just claimed he had a personal bias....like come on man, we aren't babies, I'm sure we can handle it. I've never abused anyone....like I'm sure he doesn't need to be moddycoddled, Farhad's a big boy now

Ok - lets start this again - if you single out posters on this forum and accuse them of personal bias - that is getting personal.

Stick to cricket - by all means defend SRT if you like ( as if this thread is about him !) and thats all there is to it.

I dont want to trun this thread into an India V Pak match !

just shows the status of Sachin that he evokes such strong opinions.
I dont think he was a bad captain but he definitely was biased towards Mumbaikars.
He recently said Bahutule was a good youngster - he is absolute hogwash and is 32!

I dont have anything against Moin's captaincy - not his fault he should never have been there in the team anyway ahead of Rashid!

i've heard this mumbai thing quite a bit...prove it. Seriously, Bahutule is an excellent spinner, but when u have spinners of the calibre of kartik, bhajji, and kumble, it's hard to get into the side

Has Kiwi Lee Germon got a mention yet ????
Chris Cowdrey !!! 1 test

Oh He Has Sorry !!!

Alex Stewart and Michael Atherton were both atrocious.

How bad they were only really became apparent when Nasser Hussain & Duncan Fletcher took over.

I would have included Gatting, but he did win the Ashes in Australia-which saves him! Most Pakistanis see Gatting and we see a Bulldog, strutting around in Union Jack boxers, wagging his his finger at Shakoor Rana, so we hate the guy anyway.

Has Kiwi Lee Germon got a mention yet ????
Chris Cowdrey !!! 1 test
Chris Cowdrey was desperately unlucky. In a time when England were worse than Pakistan, managing to have 4 captains in a series.

Mark Nicholas should have got the nod over Cowdrey in that series!

Germon was a disgrace. The guy wasn't even good enough to be in the team, never mind skippering them.

Chanderpaul is not skipper material either. The guy even makes Inzi look proactive.

I am surprised that people have such little regard for Moin, he lost one match, big deal, most of our captains have been far worse. The loss to England was as a result of poor management by the PCB, poor pitch preparation, and not providing Moin with a full compliment of pacers and relying on Saqlain to be a strike and stock bowler. The PCB just used him as a scapegoat.

Inzamam is rather feeble too, reactive rather than proactive, not very bright and his field placings are far from attacking, but that is the nature of the man.

I m surprised tht Le Germone (NZ wkt keeper& captain in 1996 WC) doesnt get any mention here

he was one of the most confused captains i ve seen

I m surprised tht Le Germone (NZ wkt keeper& captain in 1996 WC) doesnt get any mention here

he was one of the most confused captains i ve seen
Saj mentioned him two days and two posts ago.....:4:

My personal favorite is Shaun Pollock....under him SA went backwards....fast

Saj mentioned him two days and two posts ago.....:4:

My personal favorite is Shaun Pollock....under him SA went backwards....fast



Saj's views must have misssed my eye(fortunately for Saj :3:)


BTW i Shaun POllock does feature in my all time use less captains list


tht guy cud nt even read D/l tables correctly

Well, it's the shoulder shagging thing that mostly got me about Polly...

I don't think I have ever seen any international cricket captain with such bad on-the- field posture....especially when things start going bad....except sachin, maybe...and Graeme Smith...he just loses his temper anyhow...

Well...at least nowadays captains go onto the field with that little piece of paper in their pockets, rain or shine, right.....Polly's legacy...