Ever wondered why in Cricket, most Captains are batsmen? This question arose in my mind more than a decade back and the best answer I could come up with was that it was so because Captains are in active command while a team is fielding and coz batsmen do not have to bowl they have a freer mind and more time to make decisions regarding field placements and bowling changes. However there were examples of successful captains who were bowlers / allrounders so my question was never answered fully.
About two months back a niece advised me to make a post about Cricket from a chapter on the History of Cricket in her school History textbook and I got the answer to that old question.
Read on to find out why in Cricket Captains are ususally batsmen.
The organisation of Cricket in England reflected the nature of English society. The rich who could afford to play it for pleasure were called amateurs and the poor who played it for a living were called professionals. The rich were amateurs for two reasons. One, they considered sport a kind of leisure. To play for the pleasure of playing and not for money was an aritocratic value. Two, there was not enough money in the game for the rich to be interested. The wages of professionals were paid by patronage or subscription or gate money. The game was seasonal and did not offer employment the year round. Most professionals worked as miners or in other forms of working class employment in winter, the off-season.
The social superiority of amateurs was built into the customs of Cricket. Amateurs were called Gentlemen while professionals had to be content with being described as players. They even entered the gates from different entrances. Amateurs tended to be batsmen, leaving the energetic, hardworking aspects of the game, like fast bowling, to the professionals.
That is partly why the laws of the game always give the benefit of the doubt to the batsmen.
Cricket is a batsman's game because its rules were made to favour 'Gentlemen', who did most of the batting. The social superiority of the amateur was also the reason the Captain of a Cricket team was traditionally a batsman :
not because batsmen were naturally better Captains but because they were generally Gentlemen.
Captains of teams, whether club teams or national teams, were always amateurs. It was not till the 1930's that the English Team was led by a professional, the Yorkshire batsman,
Len Hutton.
The Story of Cricket : Chapter VIII
India and the Contemporary World - I
Textbook In History for Class IX Copyright NCERT
ISBN 81 - 7450 - 536 - 4
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