By Cricket is a sport that has been played for ages and has been the second most popular sport in the world after football. Cricket is a sport that needs strong leadership and on-spot decision-making skills. To run any team, you need a captain who takes care of his team and makes tough decisions.
The captain plays a vital role behind the success of every team. Over the years, we’ve seen some of the greatest captains who can win matches at any point in time, irrespective of the situation. Let’s glimpse at the 7 most successful Captains of cricket history…
1. Mahendra Singh Dhoni
Mahendra Singh Dhoni, known to the whole world as Captain Cool, was immensely criticized during his school time for being a shy guy. Undoubtedly, he is the most popular captain in the world of cricket. Apart from this captaincy, he’s widely known for his quick response behind the stumps. In addition, he still holds the record as the best finisher of all time.
Under his guidance, India lifted the ICC trophy in all three formats of cricket. He has won every single trophy that ever existed in the cricketing world. Under Dhoni’s captaincy, India won the ICC 2007 World Cup Twenty20, ICC World Cup 2011, ICC Champions Trophy and Test no 1 title. Dhoni has also won 5 times IPL Championship titles being a skipper of Chennai Super Kings.
2. Steve Waugh
Steve Waugh is the face of Australian cricket who has changed the way how people looked at cricket and made people understand the real meaning of dominance. He is the man who started the Australian era of dominance. He is widely known for his accurate decision-making and has a tendency to recover his team from any pressure situation. Under his leadership, Australia won the 1999 World Cup title after winning 5 consecutive matches.
3. Ricky Ponting
After the retirement of Steve Waugh, Rickey Ponting was responsible for leading the Australian side. He continued Steve Waugh’s legacy from where he left off and in fact, he made Australian cricket even more deadly. His team even defeated World 11 in both ODIs and Tests.
Under his captaincy, the Australian Cricket team won two successive titles without losing a single game, winning three World Cup in a row. His winning streak was broken in 2011 when Team India lifted the trophy again after a long interval of 28 years. Ponting has a win percentage of 76.14% in ODI, far ahead of any other skippers except for Clive Lloyd.
4. Clive Lloyd
Clive Lloyd was a brilliant batsman of his time and a brilliant captain. He is known as the captain of the world’s most deadliest/dominating team in the history of cricket. West Indies lifted the first two editions of the ICC World Cup title under his captaincy. During his leadership, the West Indian team has won 27 test matches without losing a single one. He captained a total of 84 matches and faced victory in 64 matches, making it the highest win percentage of 77.71 as a captain.
5. Kapil Dev
Next up is the fiercest captain of all time, Kapil Dev. With a team full of inexperienced state players, Kapil Dev defeated the West Indies Giants and won their first World Cup title. Dev did such a feat that year, which we can only think. The West Indies during the 1980s were unbeatable at World Cups but had to face a defeat from the weakest team of the tournament.
The Indian team had just gone for a holiday in the name of playing; nobody had thought Team India would win even a single match. But they managed to win the final, all thanks to the team and the skipper, Kapil Dev.
6. Imran Khan
Imran Khan, a former and current prime minister of Pakistan, led his side exceptionally well before entering politics. He led his team to win the 1992 Cricket World Cup, which is still Pakistan’s only one-day World Cup.
Apart from his captaincy, he also contributed with bat and bowl. He still holds the record for being one of the best all-rounders ever. He backed Inzamam ul Haq even after a poor performance in the league stages, who turned out to be a key player in the finals.
7. Eoin Morgan
Finally, Eion Morgan, the captain who led his England team to win its first-ever ICC World Cup title. Ravin Morgan has changed the way of playing white ball under his leadership. The team struggling to get 300 a few years ago scored more than ten 350+ and five times 400+ scores from 2015 to 2019. Ultimately, the fearless approach to handling white balls paid off, and England’s national cricket team won its first ODI ICC World Cup.
