If you regularly keep an eye on cricket odds, more often than not, you’ll find the same teams are favorites. While this is mostly down to the quality of the players on each team, a lot of credit has to fall the way of the captains too.
Captains have a huge role to play in a team’s success in any sport, but in cricket they are crucial. The captain has to think about their own game while also controlling the game of the 10 other players on their team.
As you can imagine, this makes cricket captaincy a very tough role. However, over the years, the sport has seen some incredible captains who have raised their teams to new heights.
In today’s post, we’re going to look at the top 5 cricket captains of all time. Oh, and if you want the latest sports odds, check out Fanduel.
- Mahendra Singh Dhoni
We’ll kickstart our list of the top 5 cricket’s greatest captains with the iconic Mahendra Singh Dhoni. Commonly referred to as MS Dhoni, Mahendra Singh Dhoni isn’t only regarded as one of the greatest Indian captains of all time, but also one of the best cricket captains in the world of ODIs.
Dhoni captained India more than 300 times which is the highest number of games by any captain across all cricket formats. This included 60 tests, 72 T20Is, and 199 ODIs.
He is also the only cricket captain in the world to have won all three ICC tournaments. As a result, it probably won’t surprise you that he also led India to the top spot in the ICC rankings.
When it came to playing, Dhoni is well known as one of the best wicketkeepers in the world and one of the best finishers cricket has ever seen.
- Graeme Smith
Graeme Smith is probably South Africa’s best captain. This also makes him one of the best captains in world cricket. Incredibly, Smith became South African captain after playing just eight times for the national side.
At just 22, Smith took the role into his stride. As one of the youngest captains in cricket history, Smith rebuilt trust in his South African team.
Under Smith’s guidance, South Africa became the greatest touring team in the world. Smith’s team still holds the record for the highest run chase in an ODI series (434) and his side also had an impressive record against England.
With 109 tests under his belt, Smith also holds the world record for captaining the most test matches.
- Ricky Ponting
Like all of the captains on our list, Ricky Ponting is often regarded as the greatest captain and cricketer the sport has ever seen. He was captain of Australia between 2004 and 2011, leading them to great success in all formats.
During his time as captain, Australia won two consecutive World Cups. In fact, he is considered to be the most successful captain in Cricket World Cup history. He won three titles for Australia in total.
Aside from being a great captain, Ponting was also a highly skilled batsman. He scored more than 13,000 test runs and over 13,000 ODI runs. Ricky Ponting is also remembered for his humanity and generosity which earned him the respect of players all over the world.
- Michael Vaughan
Michael Vaughan is arguably the best England captain there’s ever been. Admittedly, Vaughan didn’t have the best career as an ODIs player but as a captain he excelled.
He won more than half of his games as England captain which was quite impressive at the time and is widely remembered as the captain that won the 2005 Ashes against Australia.
This was no easy feat at the time because Australia was a force to be reckoned with. The only England captain to have a better win percentage than Vaughan is Eoin Morgan with a win percentage of 65.71%.
- Virat Kohli
We’ll finish our list with Virat Kohli who is statistically the greatest Indian captain ever. He is also up there with the greatest batsman to ever play the sport.
During his career, Virat Kohli set some impressive records and enjoyed extreme success both as a player and captain. Under his captaincy, India took the number one spot in the ICC test rankings and won an incredible 40 tests out of a possible 68.
This is the most for any Indian captain. He only drew 11 tests and lost 17. Only Ricky Ponting and Steve Waugh have higher win rates than Kohli. Kohli led India to great success away from home and he sits in second place in the list of ODI skippers with the most centuries.
He was only kept in second place by Ricky Ponting.
Final Thoughts
There you have it, the top 5 greatest cricket captains of all time. As you can see from our list, making it into the top 5 is going to be hard for future cricket captains.
The sport has been blessed with some incredibly talented captains, so anyone else that breaks in is going to have to be very special.
