The Myth of the Great Captain

I’m sitting here watching a documentary about the South African cricket captain Graham Smith.

They’re going on about what an inspirational leader he is and how he walked into the dressing room and dominated all the senior players. They’re making out like he’s some combination of Churchill, Nelson Mandela and Optimus Prime.

Well colour me sceptical. I’m not sold on this cult of the leader. I’m not sold on this idea that there’s some leadership gene or that you can learn leadership out of some book.

I think what allowed Smith to lead his country so successfully was that he scored a hatful of runs in his first few test matches as captain. I think this allowed him to “impose his will” or whatever the pundits are calling it.

As a way of a thought experiment… imagine he’d become captain and then not made a run all summer. Would his inspirational speeches have had the same effect? I don’t think so. I think he’d have been laughed out of the dressing room.

I think he’s been “lucky” to score his runs at highly-leveraged times and this has allowed him to manage successfully. It’s what behavioural economists would call “survivor bias”. There’s more than one way to skin a cat and there’s more than one way to lead a team (Mike Brearly lead the England cricket team from the rear – with calm and intelligence). Saying that Smith’s longevity shows that you have to be a tubthumping chearleader to captain a team is fallacious.