https://revsportz.in/pat-cummins-captaincy-a-delightful-study-in-leadership-with-empathy/
Pat Cummins has been a delightful study in leadership with empathy during the Indian Premier League 2024 season. It is well known that he had led Australia to ICC titles with aplomb, but the IPL is a different beast, having demands of its own from leaders and players alike. To helm a team that comes together a few weeks in a year presents its own set of challengers to its captains.
Therefore, irrespective of the outcome of Sunday’s final, many will pick Cummins as the captain of the season, though Kolkata Knight Riders’ Shreyas Iyer has undoubtedly led his team to more victories and tasted defeat only in three games. Rajasthan Royals’ Sanju Samson and Royal Challengers Bengaluru’s Faf du Plessis also can lay claims but Cummins towers over them all.
The 31-year-old may readily admit that Daniel Vettori has played a massive role in shaping a fearless squad, demanding aggression from the batters and backing Cummins to inspire the bowlers to do their best. But it is his reading of the game that has been a stand out feature in his maiden season as captain in an IPL franchise.
For his endearing smile – even in the face of defeat – I have been inclined to think of him as the VVS Laxman among bowlers. The first captain of a Hyderabad franchise, Laxman did not have as much luck as Deccan Chargers’ captain back in 2008 but, while they are different in their approach to captaincy, Laxman and Cummins are similar in their countenance.
Cummins is one match away from joining his Australian compatriots Adam Gilchrist (Deccan Chargers, 2009) and David Warner (Sunrisers Hyderabad, 2016) as the only captains who have led Hyderabad franchises to IPL titles. New Zealand’s Kane Williamson went close in 2018 but the team ran into a storm answering to the name of Shane Watson in the final.
Yet, when Sunrisers Hyderabad went from a high of five successive seasons of making the play-off from 2016 to 2020, to the bottom of the pile or thereabouts in three straight seasons from 2021, it needed to shake itself up. A new coach in Vettori and a new skipper in Cummins were the first steps in reversing the trend.
Many eyebrows arched in surprise when the Hyderabad franchise forked out a whopping Rs 20.50 crore in a bidding war against RCB in the IPL 2024 Player Auction. With Mitchell Starc emerging the most expensive buy at Rs 24.75 crore, they wondered why teams were spending so much on bowlers who would give the teams a maximum of four overs in each game. They were simply being unkind to Cummins’ captaincy skills.
One would not be wrong if one says that more than any other skipper, Cummins understood the plight of the bowlers this season. And it is this empathy that perhaps has led him to back the bowling unit unflinchingly. Besides his own skills with the cricket ball, he optimised the experience of Bhuvneshwar Kumar and T Natarajan while using other bowlers at his disposal admirably.
Truth to tell, Cummins may agree that consigning Washington Sundar to the bench nearly the whole season was not the best thing to do (no thanks to the Impact Player rule). But from what we see on two-dimensional images that stream on our screens, it can be surmised that he would have handled the uncomfortable situation better than most.
It is not as if all his decisions have been on the money. The idea of batting first in the Qualifier 1 against Kolkata Knight Riders on a Motera track that would have been sweating after being kept under cover through the day to protect it from the blazing heat backfired on the team big time. Fortunately, the tournament format has allowed him to make amends. And how!
To my mind, coach Vettori and he helped the team overcome crippling thoughts of a crushing loss in the Qualifier 1. They succeeded in getting the team to quickly leave those memories behind and find the winning sequence in Qualifier 2 against Rajasthan Royals in Chennai. By ensuring they remained in good space, the SRH leadership did itself a good turn.
Yet, it was Cummins’ use of left-arm spin attack, with Abhishek Sharma complementing Shahbaz Ahmed, in the defence of a sub-par score against Rajasthan Royals, that made many sit up and take note of his leadership skills. The truth is that he had done enough and more to inspire his side to rise from a dismal 10th place finish in 2023 to the title clash this year.
Indeed, no matter what happens on Sunday night at the MA Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai’s Chepauk locality, Cummins has given enough evidence during the IPL to students of leadership and management. Even those who are not the greatest fans of Twenty20 cricket will concede there can be so much to learn from watching such a captain at work.
