The former Australian great Mike Hussey who had the luxury to play under some of the best captains in the world shared his experience of playing under them and in the process also compared their styles of handling players.
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One of the most consistent players for Australia during his playing days played most of his matches under Ricky Ponting. When asked about him, he said
They are all very different characters. Ricky Ponting was so competitive and led from the front and backed his players 100%. He wanted to win so badly and dragged the whole team along with him.
The world cup winning captain for Australia in Michael Clarke is one player who goes unnoticed for his efforts both as a captain and as a batsman.
“I would say Michael Clarke was very tactical and very good brain on the cricket field, knew when to bowl certain bowlers and things like that,” Hussey said
Mike Hussey is the batting coach for MS Dhoni led CSK but Hussey has played 6 seasons under MS Dhoni for CSK as a player as well. Here’s what he had to say about MS Dhoni
MSD… he has a great intuition for the game but he is also very calm and cool, backs his players enormously and shows a lot of faith in them
Mike Hussey also praised the 4 time IPL winning captain in Rohit Sharma in his podcast.
Rohit was much the same. He is very calm under pressure and tactically very sound as well. All of them had this ability to take pressure off players and I think that was a good thing
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Mike Hussey further added that the likes of MS Dhoni and Ricky Ponting have calm head on their shoulders as they react in the same way in all critical situations.
“Whether the team is going really well or going poorly, they are just consistent and calm with their personalities. Ricky, for example, whether he scored a hundred or scored a duck, he was just the same person. MSD, whether won four games in a row or lost four games in a row, he is exactly the same person. I think that is a very good attribute to have from a leadership point of view and it rubs off on everyone else on the team,” Hussey stated
It is always important for a captain to lead from the front and to maintain a comfortable environment to get the best out of his team.
“If you have an emotional character as a captain who is always going up and down, the team rides those waves with the captain, but if a captain is control and calm, and consistent with his personality, then that really helps the team,” Mike Hussey concluded
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