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Is Shane Watson Australia’s greatest ever captain? After his brilliant all-round, man of the match performance in the third and final T20 international against India, it seems difficult to come to any other conclusion. Let’s go over the facts.
Who are the other major candidates? Sir Donald Bradman, captain of the Invincibles? Allan Border, the man who captained Australia in more Tests than anybody else? Steve Waugh, who won 72 per cent of the Tests he captained?
Sure, these guys are perfectly competent captains in their way, but their records are also all fundamentally limited.
Not a single one of them ever captained Australia in a T20 international. Heck, Bradman didn’t even captain Australia in an ODI. Do they even have even the faintest inkling of what it’s like to be marshalling your field to try to stop a rampaging Virat Kohli, while simultaneously under the burden that your best remaining bowling options are Shaun Tait (3-0-58-0) and Scott Boland (0-0-0-0)?
They do not.
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So it only makes sense to consider those captains who have captained Australia in all three forms of the game. And that just leaves us with Ricky Ponting, Adam Gilchrist, Michael Clarke and Steve Smith as alternative greatest ever captains.
Ponting first. While he has a good overall record on paper, we must never forget that the game isn’t played on paper. It’s scored on paper and played on grass, which is the best way to divvy up those two materials. Common sense, people.
But Ponting also lost the Ashes thrice. And that’s careless captaincy at best. Watson is definitely well ahead of Ponting on this captaincy score, with his sole Test defeat as captain coming against India, who don’t even compete for the Ashes. At least, not yet.
Advantage Watson.
Over to Gilchrist, then, who, like Watson, was only ever considered as a stand-in captain. This is disappointing, because Gilchrist’s captaincy record is, in fact, very good, most notably when he captained Australia to victory in a Test series against India in India. This victory was lauded as conquering the ‘final frontier’, despite the undeniable fact that Test cricket continued to be played after that point, tarnishing the claim somewhat. But it was still an outstanding achievement in leadership.
But Gilchrist, as most hardcore cricketing pundits will tell you, was also a wicketkeeper. And if there’s one thing Australian selectors know in the fundamental core of their beings, right down beside the bit where you always select Shaun Marsh if the opportunity is there, it’s that wicketkeepers shouldn’t be captains.
The reasons for the discrimination against keepers are unclear, and it’s always unsafe to delve too deeply into the mindsets of selectors. But the rationale is that keepers have too much on their mind to properly captain. Something to do with angles, I believe. You can’t have a man captain a side when his head is full of trigonometry. That’s a scientific fact.
What about Michael Clarke, then? The captain with more funk than Rick James. Can Watson really be said to be a better captain than Superfreak Clarke?
And the answer is that of course he can. Let’s put aside the Pontingesque fact that Clarke also lost the Ashes twice in England and compare the two solely on Clarke’s raison d’etre of funkiness.
Shane Watson captained his sole Test against India, immediately after being suspended as part of HomeworkGate and flying home for the birth of his child. And in that Test he opened the batting and bowling with Glenn Maxwell. Yep. In one Test, Watson outfunked the entirety of Clarke’s career.
Case closed.
Which brings us to Steve Smith, the current captain. And, in many ways, it’s an unfair comparison. Smith is only getting started as captain, whereas Watson is more than likely approaching the end of his tenure. Who knows how Smith’s leadership career will unfold from here? Maybe he’ll someday amass a record that can be compared favourably to Watson’s. But that’s just speculation. He may also falter and end up with a captaincy record that makes any kind of comparison laughable.
Let’s put an asterisk on Smith’s captaincy and return to it once we get the full picture.
It’s obvious Watson is Australia’s greatest ever cricket captain when compared to the other men who might stake a claim for that honour.
But why stop there? What about if we cross gender lines? Is he a better captain than Meg Lanning? Well, until Lanning masters the double fist-pump roar of triumph when she takes a wicket and the soul-crushed “aw, nooo” whenever her wicket falls, Watto’s got her covered.
Other sports? John Eales? King Wally Lewis? Anne Sergeant? Johnny Warren? Lauren Jackson? None of those sports are cricket, so again, Watson has the advantage.
The facts are clear. Shane Watson is the greatest Australian captain of all time. Let’s just make him the full-time captain of everything. The T20 team. The Test team. The starship Enterprise. Featherswords. Everything.