Spin meets Mike Brearley

 Mike Brearley is widely regarded as the greatest English Ashes captain of all. Recalled to the captaincy for the third Test of the 1981 series, he presided over what remains the most iconic fightback of all time, one that saw England take the Ashes 3-1 and secure the legendary status of Ian Botham, Bob Willis and Brearley himself. 

In all, Brearley beat Australia 11 times in Tests, losing just five. In 1978/79, he led England to their biggest win over the Aussies, a 5-1 drubbing of a side weakened by defections to World Series Cricket. But 1981 was his finest hour. He was 39 by then and retired from international cricket at the end of the summer. After an era in which his Middlesex side had dominated the domestic game, Brearley left county cricket at the end of the following season. 

With his Cambridge Classics background, Brearley, as a captain, was regarded as a donnish master of psychology, a great man-manager and original thinker: he averaged just 22 in his 39 Tests (1976-1981), which contributed to the notion that he was in the England team as a specialist captain, rather than one of the best 11 players in the country. That, after retirement from the game, he should go on to practice as a psychoanalyst, only confirmed the impression. 

Brearley’s book, ‘The Art of Captaincy’, first published in 1985, soon became required reading for any skipper. Now, a quarter of a century on, Brearley has produced a new, interactive captaincy masterclass, for the online Pitchvision academy.  

SPIN: Should the captain be involved in the selection process?

Mike Brearley: I think so, yes. Not everyone agrees. Australian captains never have been selectors and sometimes haven’t even been asked for their opinions.

The argument against captains selecting teams is that it can damage their relationship with the players…

That’s true, it can. But leadership is full of dealing with hurt and upset. It’s not just selection, either. A bowler might be unhappy if they don’t get to bowl at the end they want, or if they don’t come on to bowl when they want. You have to be prepared to engage with people who don’t get what they want and deal with those issues. You have to be strong enough to say, “I stand by that decision.”

You have to be prepared to be unpopular?

Absolutely. There’s no virtue in courting unpopularity, but you do have to be prepared to be unpopular. The thing is that respect and popularity are different things. People do get upset and people can dislike you; that’s human nature. Sometimes you have to work to regain their respect.

You took time out of the game in your mid-20s. Could a player come back from a similar break today?

With difficulty. I hesitate to say it wouldn’t be possible, but I do think it would be hard. For a start, careers are shorter now. I know Sanath Jayasuriya played in the World Twenty20 aged 39, but he was the oldest by miles. Players have to be fitter and more athletic. It’s a more professional game now and today’s players have to spend more of the year involved. I thought I’d finished as
a cricketer. But then Middlesex offered me the captaincy at a time [in 1971] when I
was thinking I wasn’t cut out to be a university lecturer.

 The timing was lucky. Actually there was quite a lot of luck involved in my career. I mean, I was fortunate to be picked for England aged 34 [in 1976] and I was only asked to be captain [in 1977] when Tony Greig became involved with Packer. There was a lot of chance involved for me.

Did that period out of the game affect your batting?

I think so, yes. It was from when I was 25 to when I was 29, I think. Those are key years for batsmen. But things were different then: I did play for Middlesex  occasionally. I remember playing immediately after returning from a holiday in Florence. I think I was out for nought, though it may have been the time I was run-out without facing.

You were good enough to win selection for the MCC team to South Africa in 1964 as a 22-year-old batsman. But you are sometimes described as a specialist captain and your batting is largely forgotten. Does that grate?

What grates me is the fact that I didn’t score more runs in Test cricket. I scored a lot in county cricket, but I didn’t do it in Tests. Even now, I regret that. I sometimes find myself thinking about mistakes I made when batting. It’s a great disappointment that I never scored a Test century. I had some good moments – a 50 here and there, even a 91 – but my record as a Test batsman is a disappointment.

You played against some pretty ferocious fast bowling attacks…

Yes, but I also played during the Packer years when the bowling attacks weren’t as strong. As I say, I still find myself thinking about the mistakes I made when batting. Human nature, I suppose.

It seems somewhat ironic that, as a captain, you were able to coax the best out of most of your players, but not yourself.

Quite. John Arlott wrote a very warm article about me entitled ‘Physician heal thyself’, the theme of which was that I seemed to be able to do more for others than I could for myself. I was a bit tense, I think. I was probably trying too hard, in Test cricket in particular.

Had you been your captain, what would you have done to help you?

It’s a very good question. I never quite put it in those ways. I wish I had. I wish I had been more thoughtful. I would have tried to find a way to get me to relax. I would have tried to free me up. I could see it happening with other players. A few years ago I had a conversation with Mike Gatting. He had been dismissed playing no shot to Malcolm Marshall in Test cricket a couple of times. Now Marshall was a terrific bowler but Mike was not out like that in county cricket. He was worried about Marshall’s outswinger and had begun to think of complexities that, in another context, he would not have done.

Might Twenty20 have helped your batting?

It might have been good for me. It might have helped. Batting is a combination of spontaneity and control. Some people suffer through ill discipline and others suffer through leaving no room for spontaneity. The balance was not quite right for me.

Which captains have you admired and learned from?

Tactically I learned a great deal from Ray Illingworth. He was very shrewd and he knew the game to an extreme degree. There was a thoroughness about him. Tony Greig was good in an extrovert way, too. I learned a lot from playing under him. I wouldn’t say I played under any great captains at Middlesex. I admired Keith Fletcher, too. I thought he was treated very badly by England when he was captain [Fletcher succeeded Brearley as skipper, on the 1981/82 tour of India], which was a shame. I wouldn’t say I recommended him as England captain, but I had spoken warmly about him.

Graeme Smith seems like a good captain, as did Dhoni and Younus Khan. I suppose that must seem like a pretty mixed bunch?

But captains vary hugely in personality and style. The secret is in finding a balance between treating everyone differently but treating everyone with an eye to fairness.

You wouldn’t treat David Gower and Graham Gooch the same, for example. Gower was a sort of child of nature. He had that lovely, languid style, but he wasn’t keen on practise. My solution was to make Gower attend nets for the first half of a tour, but once he had played a bit, to let him do his own thing. Different people have different requirements.

It’s hard for me to comment about modern captains as I’m not close enough to the game to see. But I thought Michael Vaughan was very good. He was innovative and put people in different places, though the flaws began to show towards the end. Michael Atherton was good, too, though he could be a bit tense. And Nasser Hussain was good. But you can find flaws with everyone after a while.

Does that mean that there is a lifespan to captaincy? You were captain at Middlesex for more than a decade…

I imagine that captains can renew themselves. I don’t think there’s a specific lifespan. But there is a risk that, after two, three or four years, a captain can become a bit stuck in their ways. People get fed up of listening to the same voices and hearing the same ideas, so a captain probably needs provoking to renew themselves. 

It was difficult at Middlesex at the beginning, but then we started to perform a little better. I needed little reminders, though. I came back from a tour at the start of one season and found that I hadn’t been re-elected as captain. 

There were questions about my commitment. I think the previous year had been quite hard – perhaps I had been injured or it had been my benefit season – but there were questions that people wanted answering. I was upset at the time but it was the players’ way of making sure I was still committed. It worked, too. I became more involved; I organised nets and practise and threw myself into Middlesex again. Yes, it was quite a useful experience.

Tell us about the new coaching course you’ve put together.

Derek Randall had done a fielding course for Pitchvision and thought I could do something similar with captaincy. I’m still interested in captaincy and leadership. I wrote a book a few years ago, The Art of Captaincy, and the hope is that this will reach a new audience.

Mike Brearley’s new interactive Cricket Captaincy masterclass – with video, audio and written components – is available at www.pitchvision.com/academy. The Pitchvision academy offers a range of courses on all aspects of the game.