The role of captain in Test cricket is a demanding one. It requires strategic acumen, strong leadership skills, and the ability to inspire a team to perform at its peak over a gruelling five-day format. Here’s a look at the top 10 players who have led their teams in the most Test matches:
1. Graeme Smith, South Africa 109 Match
Graeme Smith, who looms even larger than all that as South Africa’s colossus of a captain. His achievements as a batsman are large, but the maximum essential monument to his profession is the truth that he is under Smith.
The self-assurance of South Africans, each within and outdoor of the country-wide crew and its structures, has been rebuilt. Smith’s management and his batting are all about being direct and prematurely.
2. Allan Border, Australia 93 Match
Allan Border parlayed three shots and a fanatical zeal approximately not giving away his wicket into the most long-lasting profession that cricket in his time had regarded.
At his retirement he had featured in extra Tests, more consecutive Tests, more Tests as captain and extra catches than every other player – and a batting average of fifty as properly.
His underused left-arm spin as soon as brought him eleven for 96 in opposition to West Indies, and he became also a clever one-day participant with a deadly arm from quick midwicket.
3. Stephen Fleming, New Zeland 80 Match
Stephen Fleming will move down as his country’s most successful captain and one of their high-quality batsman after a worldwide profession that spanned 15 years.
He owns a series of statistics, including the first New Zealander to skip 7000 Test runs, a landmark reached in the course of his final series against England in 2008.
During his closing innings, in Napier, he did simply sufficient to raise his career common over forty. Nine Test centuries is a terrible return for the sort of skills, however Fleming was worth more than his statistics.
4. Ricky Ponting, Australia 77 Match
Ricky Ponting, the maximum uncompromising player of his generation, grew into Australia’s most successful run-maker. It takes a very critical eye to diminish his run-scoring achievements, which appear to gather new statistics in each series.
Like recognising a superstar, it is necessary to look two times while analysing Ponting, first because of the archetypal contemporary batsman, then because of the United States’ 42nd Test captain.
There is no doubt approximately his greatness after taking defence, however, his leadership has been beneath scrutiny for an awful lot of his reign.
While his blade has sparkled, his stewardship is marked by three Ashes defeats – two in England and one at domestic – and stumbles to South Africa and India.
5. Clive Lloyd, West Indies 74 Match
Clive Lloyd made his first-class debut as a left-hand center-order batsman within the then British Guiana in 1963-sixty-four and performed for Haslingden in the Lancashire League in 1967.
He became offered phrases with the aid of Warwickshire before signing for Lancashire, making his debut for them in 1968, and prevailing his cap the following season.
Lloyd had already made his Test debut, in opposition to India at Mumbai in December 1966, hitting 82 and 78 not out as he placed on 102 runs with Sobers to win the match on a pitch assisting the spinners.
6. Virat Kohli, India 68 Match
India has given to the world many a high-quality cricketer but perhaps none as formidable as Virat Kohli.
To meet his ambition, Kohli employed the technical assiduousness of Sachin Tendulkar and his health changed into the league of pinnacle athletes within the international, now not simply cricketers.
As a result, Kohli has become the most constant all-layout accumulator of his time, making jaw-dropping chases look smooth, and finding, in his own words, the most secure feasible way to score runs. Plenty of them.
7. Joe Root, England 64 Match
Joe Root might sooner, or later captain England changed into taken as study whilst he hit the grand old age of 23.
The accolade everyone predicted has become his 3 years later, while Alastair Cook stood down after the 2016-17 tour of India.
It changed into understandable that there were a few fears for Root’s destiny workload. He was rare among England batsmen in attaining adulthood so quickly and had seemed consumed by the delights of batting from the instant he first took defence. Now he had new obligations.
8. M S Dhoni, India 60 Match
MS Dhoni might be the maximum famous and the most scrutinised cricketer from India.
He has been given to date coming from the cricketing backwaters, the mining nation of Jharkhand, and through a domestic-made batting and wicketkeeping method, and a style of captaincy that scales the highs and lows of both conservatism and unorthodoxy.
Under Dhoni’s captaincy, India has gained the pinnacle prize in all codecs: topping the Test rankings for 18 months starting December 2009, the 50-over World Cup in 2011 and the World T20 on his captaincy debut in 2007.
9. Alastair Cook, England 59 Match
Alastair Cook held in the affections of fans of England cricket, they had been dispelled during his final Test. Cook became by no means a mainly elegant batsman.
He wasn’t especially eloquent, either. And his career encompassed its truthful percentage of downs as well as ups.
There were moments – which included inside the latter ranges of his time captaining England’s ODI side or in the course of the interminable fall-out of the Kevin Pietersen saga – when it seemed his love affair with the supporters may want to sour.
10. Steve Waugh, Australia 57 Match
Steve Waugh is the final evolved cricketer. Thrown to the wolves at 20, he flailed in any respect bowling, sent down bouncers at Viv Richards, and tasted Ashes defeat.
Then he helped win a World Cup and made 393 runs before dropping his wicket in England in 1989 – but admitted that he did no longer recognise his very own game, and 18 months later lost his region to his minutes-more youthful dual, Mark.
It becomes his catharsis. Upon his take into account, he minimalist his batsmanship, forgoing threat and anticipating the loose ball, which he nonetheless punished severely. He was all but compelled to surrender bowling by way of back problems.
A collection of epic innings ensued, none higher than his 2 hundred in Jamaica in 1994-95 to hurry Australia to a historical series win, or his dual hundreds at Old Trafford to show the 1997 Ashes series.