Dravid has best ODI success rate among Indian captains
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NEW DELHI: With the World Cup around the corner and the top eight teams gunning to lift the most coveted trophy in the West Indies, there is good news for Indian skipper Rahul Dravid. Statistics show that the 'Wall' is India's most successful One-day captain among all those who have captained India in at least 20 matches.
Under Dravid, India have won 32 of the 58 matches that have produced results during his tenure. That's a success rate of 55%, just a little higher than the 54% success rate that Sourav Ganguly, Mohammad Azharuddin and Kapil Dev had. This may seem like a fine point, but the statistics actually understate how much more successful Dravid has been than his predecessors.
That's because, of the 62 One-day matches in which Dravid has captained, only two have been played against a traditional minnow %u2014 Zimbabwe in 2005 %u2014 while the rest have all been against the top teams in world cricket.
In contrast, Ganguly had 31 wins against the likes of Bangladesh, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Namibia and Netherlands boosting his success rate and Azhar had the benefit of 20 wins against the whipping boys of international cricket.
Exclude matches against the minnows and Dravid's success rate drops to 54%, but Ganguly's goes down to 43% and Azhar's to 49%.
Only Kapil Dev, with a 51% success rate against the better teams, comes close to matching Dravid's record.
Kapil, in fact, has a better record leading away from home %u2014 excluding minnows %u2014 than even Dravid. On foreign soil, Kapil won 49% of the matches he led in, whereas Dravid has won 10 out of 23 completed matches for a 43% success rate. That put's him in third place behind Gavaskar, who had a 46% success rate with 11 wins in 24 matches.
Ganguly's record abroad (23%) is the worst among the six captains who have led India at least in 20 matches each.
Azhar has the best record at home (excluding minnows) with a 65% win rate, but Dravid is not far behind at 61%. On this list, Ganguly finishes in fifth spot, ahead of Gavaskar, who could captain India to only 14 wins in 35 completed matches.
RE:Dravid has best ODI success rate among Indian captains
by Kaushik Basu on Feb 23, 2007 01:56 AM Permalink
The stats doesn't show that the team is going down hill, which is not the case with his predecessors. Remember Azhar took over when all senior players suddenly left the team. He never had legends in his team. Under him Kumble, Sachin, Dravid and Ganguly developed. Ganguly took over when the whole team was shaken by the match fixing controversy. From there within 3 and a half year he developed the team into a world beater team. Remember under him developed Zaheer, Yuvraj, Sehwag, Harbhajan and Kaif. Rahul got a solid team. But now it is going down hill. If you had made this comparisn a few weeks ago, his stint as captain would have looked even more impressive. It is not always as it appears to be in stats, because as the name is it is static whereas the game itself is dynamic. So don't compare these as the situations for the captains were totally different.
