Kevin on top - Blues Brothers at Cricinfo

On its part, India have appointed all sorts of captains. In the case of Sunil Gavaskar, Kapil Dev and Sachin Tendulkar, and perhaps Dilip Vengsarkar and Rahul Dravid too, it gave the job to the most valuable player at the time. It didn’t work in four of the cases and in the fifth, Gavaskar, produced a successful but sometimes overly defensive captain. Kapil was called an instinctual captain – which meant he smiled and looked in command when the going was good but his standard response to a bad day was scowling and overbowling himself.

More often than not, political and factional considerations – and the insecurities of the cricket administrators – decided the choice of India captain. How else do you explain Azharuddin getting the job over Ravi Shastri?

Few facets of cricket attract as much controversy or variety as theories of captaincy. In recent years, inspired largely by the Australian model, more and more cricket teams have experimented with separate captains for Tests and one-day games. I suspect we’re close to the end of that phase.

The advent of T20 has changed things. Cricket has just about come to live with two captains and conceded this need not destabilise a country’s team(s) and confuse its players; three captains is quite another matter.

If England is glad Pietersen can claim a place in all three international teams (Test, ODI and T20), it would rather have him captaining all the year through, for all sorts of games. That was probably the clinching factor that swung the Indian T20 and ODI captaincy (and Test vice-captaincy) for Mahendra Singh Dhoni as well. Here was one cricketer who, the selectors were sure, could be part of all three XIs.

A Yuvraj Singh may never sustain as a Test cricketer. In 2007, when Dravid quit and a succession plan was being put in place, Virender Sehwag was out of form and so ruled out of contention (it may have been a different story if Dravid had hung on to the captain’s job for another year). Now, of course, Dhoni is almost certain to don Anil Kumble’s mantle as leader of the Test side. The change is probably no more than a season away.

It’s interesting that while the idea of captain Dhoni or captain Pietersen represents continuity and stability to administrators, neither has been around too long. Both came into their national XIs about three years ago and have, in a fairly short period, raced past more experienced colleagues who were fancied as future captains.

In their own way, Dhoni and Pietersen have displayed nerve and resilience. In the Pietersen’s case, the challenges were unique in that he changed countries and was called a mercenary by both his former South African compatriots and a sceptical English cricket fraternity. In one of his early series, he toured South Africa and was booed and barracked by a crowd that saw him as some sort of a traitor. He fought back with three hundreds.

The refusal to surrender, the arresting arrogance, the almost imperious self-belief – it reminded me of Douglas Jardine. Only those who don’t see Jardine though a narrow, one-dimensional prism will know what I mean, I suppose. Anyhow, I’ve admired Pietersen ever since. May he have a good run as captain.

As a huge Pom-bashing fan, I must confess to being deliriously happy as well. England are perhaps the most overrated, over hyped, arrogant bunch of whiners in world cricket. Flintoff is probably the only player who would rank higher than Pietersen for that description. Yes Pietersen is a good batsmen, but he's not as good as he seems to think he his. Here's why Pietersen (and England even more) is going to fail at when he's captain:
1) We all saw how quickly he wanted to leave Australia after the Ashes. He clearly doesn't know how to deal with failure as a player. How inspiring could this be to teammates?
2) Pietersen doesn't know failure as a batsman yet. Ideally you want a player who is a bit predictable when dealing with his own failings, you have none with Pietersen.
3) Flamboyance and arrogance do not a good captain make. The best cricketers do not always have the sharpest man-management skills. I love listening to him at post match conferences, its hilarious how dumb he is.

In many cases a captain is only as good as the players under him. The captain that has the Aussie team from 1994-2007 or the Windies captain of the 70's,80's (Taylor, Waugh, Ponting, Lloyd, Richards) had multiple legends of the game in each team. The team basically picked itself and won more matches than not.

Pietersen may have problems with players not being able to raise to his incredible levels. I often saw VIV getting very cross with his own teammates from time2time.

Another possiblity is the 'Lara effect'i.e. not being a succesfull captain (crap team, strange decisions, loftyness)but still being a wonderful batsman and carrying the team. Vaughn, Fleming, Worrell, Border, great captains.

Ashok, wasn't Azhar made captain because Kris's, the incumbent, batting suffered after assuming captaincy? You know better because I was too young to watch cricket then, forget grasping cricket politics.

I wish KP could really turn out to be Jardine-incarnate but my gut feel is that this is going to go horribly wrong (yet again!!!). Curiously enough, he said he was not a wimp, so he would accept it. Meaning, he himself is not too comfortable or assured with the mantle of captaincy resting on him.

India nearly fell into the messiah trap by craving for Yuvi as captain. Thank God for our cynical selectors, who sent what they thought was a second-grade team of youngsters to SA which ended up winning the Cup and cast MSD's captaincy candidature in stone.