mvaughan

There are plenty of ingredients you need to win a World Cup and one of them is a good, strong, experienced captain. I always think that this roles is even more important in limited-overs matches than Test cricket. After all, bowling changes, batting line-ups, fielding placements and when to take powerplays are often the difference between success and failure. The captain who gets most of them right often ends up on the winning side.

So who's the real deal?

I've already said India are my pick to win this tournament and the fact that MS Dhoni is the man in charge was part of my reasoning for that. It obviously helps that he's got a wonderful set of players at his disposal and a great balance to his side that always gives him plenty of options whether batting or bowling. But where Dhoni is better than most is that he's a pro-active captain. He doesn't wait for problems to emerge and then fix them, he tries to create problems for the opposition and give them something to think about. He's also a very laid-back guy and that helps to keep his players calm and collected.

Graeme Smith is a very different sort of captain, much more of a motivator. There's a lot of clapping and shouting when he's in charge but in fairness to him he's improved a lot when it comes to the tactical side of the game. Ok, he's not Mike Brearley just yet but he's always learning and he's far more resourceful and a far better thinker now than when he first took over.

Then there's Ricky Ponting. His critics will say that in Glenn McGrath, Matthew Hayden, Adam Gilchrist, Andrew Symonds and others he had such a wonderful set of players that it almost didn't matter who was in charge, but that's harsh on 'Punter'. Not every game they played en route to winning back-to-back World Cups under him were landslides and he made plenty of good decisions along the way that got Australia over the line. He's always been a strong leader and Australia have done the right thing by keeping him in charge for the World Cup.

As for Andrew Strauss, he's a fine captain himself but this is a results business and he needs to lead England to a big tournament win to prove he's as good an ODI captain as he is Test captain. Things aren't looking quite as rosy in the England camp as they were a few weeks ago after a pretty disastrous ODI Series so is now is the time for him to earn his corn and motivate his troops into becoming genuine World Cup contenders.

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