Is it a blessing or a curse to become the captain of your country’s cricket team? Scientists have discovered that it depends on whether you prefer to play with a ball or a bat in your hand.
At one crease, batters benefit from being named captain, a study has found. They score an average of 16 percent more runs than their teammates. At the other crease, there is no such bounce for bowlers who are named skippers, as they appear to take 18 percent fewer wickets than their colleagues.
The research, published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, found: “Batterers tend to improve their performance when they become captain, while bowlers tend to deteriorate.”
After losing the captaincy, batsmen see their performances “decline significantly, even below 1000,000,000.” their pre-captaincy levels,” while bowlers see an even more substantial slump.
Researchers from the Central European University in Vienna and the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research analysed 4,418 men’s one-day internationals (ODI) and 2,863 players who played between 1971 and this year.
Batsmen were classified as those who had played at least 25 matches and had batted at number seven or above in at least half of them, with 580 included in the study. Bowlers were classified as those who had played at least 25 matches and had bowled in at least half of them, with 551 included in the analysis.
The researchers looked at whether these players had been named captain of their country’s ODI team for at least 15 matches, and whether their performance improved or deteriorated after being named captain and after they had relinquished their captaincy. They identified 172 captains, of whom 71 percent were batsmen and 29 percent were bowlers.
The research found it was also possible that captain-bowlers, such as Australian Pat Cummins, had a tendency to put themselves out “to bowl at the wrong time to relieve pressure on the team”.
PATRICK HAMILTON/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
The study concluded: “Captain-batsmen’s performance improves during their captaincy, while it declines for captain-bowlers.”
Batsmen are often chosen as captains for their high-scoring performance, while bowlers are not necessarily selected because they are prolific wicket-takers, the study said, noting: “Batsmen may need to consistently outperform their peers [to be selected as captain]while bowler captaincy seems to be less dependent on individual performance.”
Batsmen may see captaincy as an opportunity to “lead by exemplary performance” by increasing their run rate at the crease. Bowlers, however, “may experience captaincy as a burden”.
It is also possible that captain bowlers may have a tendency to set themselves up to “bowl at the wrong time to relieve the pressure on the team”, by bowling for a while at a time when another team-mate would have been better suited at that point in the match or under those circumstances.
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The findings suggest that there is a “differential impact of captaincy on different types of players”, implying that batsmen may be more suited to the role than bowlers.
In a separate aspect of the study, the researchers found that players who had been dropped from the team for a period of time saw a large spike in their performance when they were reinstated. It was noted that there was a strong ‘comeback’ effect for returning players ‘with batsmen recording an improvement of around 36 per cent and bowlers showing an improvement of 30 per cent compared to their final performance before removal’.
These levels then remained high for a long period of time, suggesting that an underperforming player’s performance can often be improved by temporarily removing him from the team.