India’s interim captain Ajinkya Rahane has said his appointment came as a surprise. He might have a bigger role to play in Indian cricket, though, as its No. 2 man. The captaincy question having been settled, the selectors cannot be faulted for focusing on the next important job: that of the vice-captain.
The boxes against Rahane’s skill and temperament are ticked; now comes the test of tactical nous and man management.
The vice-captain is the least feted post in cricket. It is human to look forward to the day when the top job becomes your own, so there is a paradox here: be useful to your captain and you delay your own promotion! Yet the vice- captain plays a crucial role.
Some of the finest players never to have led have been paid rich tributes by those who did. When he became captain, Steve Waugh said, “What I needed was a strong lieutenant. In Warne as a vice-captain I had a good mate with a sharp cricketing mind.” More recently, Sourav Ganguly had someone like Rahul Dravid as his deputy before the latter went on to lead himself.
Test captain Virat Kohli — who should soon inherit the position in the other formats too — is attacking, positive, unafraid to experiment, not shy of returning a sledge or displaying a bit of macho on the field.
A vice-captain to such a personality must have a more sober temperament, be conscious of the need for occasionally reining in the aggression. The candidates are R. Ashwin, Rahane and Cheteshwar Pujara. Rohit Sharma too, but he will have to cement his place in the side. They are all in the 27-29 age group, slightly older than Kohli, and may or may not become captains in the future. But they make ideal vice-captains.
Not always in Indian cricket has a vice-captain inevitably become captain. Nor has a captain in one format automatically led in the others. Vice-captains, like Vice-Presidents of a country, come into prominence only when the man at the top is no longer in charge. The list of those who have been vice-captains of the national side but never led includes Vijay Merchant and Mohinder Amarnath, Harbhajan Singh and V.V.S. Laxman. Others like Chandu Borde, Pankaj Roy and even Ravi Shastri — the man who was groomed for the job as a junior — led in only a single Test.
Indian selectors have traditionally been reluctant to name a vice-captain. With Test match series against Sri Lanka and South Africa due and a new generation settling in, this is one convention that needs to go. This reluctance has often led to ridiculous situations. When skipper Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi had to leave the field during a Test against the West Indies in Bangalore, the team which included future captains S. Venkatraghavan, Sunil Gavaskar and G. R. Viswanath didn’t know who was to be in charge. Then substitute Rajinder Goel ran out to inform the players that it would be Gavaskar.
Different types Vice-captains are of two types — the young, promising future leader chosen to serve a period of apprenticeship, or a senior player named to guide a young captain. Thus it was that 21-year-old Pataudi was given the job when the entire team was senior to him. Skipper Nari Contractor was 28 when he was struck on the head by a Charlie Griffith delivery in Barbados on the 1962 tour. He never played again. Pataudi took over. On his first two tours, Pataudi had as his deputy Borde, senior to him by seven years and expected to be the voice of experience.
Occasionally, there is a third type. The senior player named vice-captain for the honour of it. Thus did V.V.S. Laxman become vice-captain to Dhoni in the West Indies.
Rahane will be watched with interest in Zimbabwe. Pujara, meanwhile, is leading the India ‘A’ team. The clichéd bias against bowler-captains might work against Ashwin, although that is not a good reason to deprive him — after all, one of India’s finest was Anil Kumble. Any one of the three could be the man India is looking for as, initially, a long-term vice-captain.
