Leadership matters

Leadership is a completely different ball game. It is not at all easy to be a leader. Leaders are born, they can’t be trained. This was proved right once again when Chennai Super Kings’s skipper Ravindra Jadeja relinquished his captaincy abruptly in the middle of the tournament and the CSK captaincy went back to maestro Mahendra Singh Dhoni.

One of the finest all-rounders of India, Jadeja could not manage the leadership position at all. He looked completely lost from the beginning of the tournament. We could feel a change in his performance as well. He badly struggled with the bat and the ball. Even CSK’s performance deteriorated under his leadership, and they lost almost the matches they played this year.

It looked completely awkward to see a champion team losing all the matches. I must appreciate Jadeja for taking a decision to step down from the captaincy. It needs courage to do that. He was quick to understand what he can and what he can’t do. I feel the same thing happening with KKR’s young captain Shreyas Iyer and Punjab King’s Mayank Agarwal.  Both of them are prolific batsmen and they have displayed their skill at the international level as well but as captains they failed miserably.

I hope they too understand their skill and take a decision to focus on their game. As we know India has produced hundreds of legendary cricketers in the past, but when it comes to being a successful captain then we remember only a few.  We have recently witnessed how Virat Kohli failed at  the captaincy, despite being the best cricketer of this generation.

Tanmay Pandit,
By email