Laxman Sivaramakrishnan recently stated that his state mate and former India captain, Krishnamachari Srikkanth could have captained India for a longer period of time. He also credited the attacking opener, who was the captain for Tendulkar’s debut tour, to have played an instrumental role in instilling confidence in Sachin in his early days.
As it turned out, Srikkanth only ended up captaining for 4 tests and 13 ODIs, but according to Siva his attacking approach and decisive leadership deserved more of a chance than just one difficult tour of Pakistan, which by the way India drew and didn’t lose. In hindsight it is surprising that after a good result ‘Cheeka’ was removed from captaincy and one can’t help but think if other factors apart from cricket were at play here.
“Cheeka (Srikkanth) was an aggressive captain. He provided a lot of results. He was very proactive,” Sivaramakrishnan said on the Cricket Connected Show on Star Sports Tamil. “A player like Tendulkar made his debut under Cheeka’s captaincy. Cheeka’s encouragement to Sachin Tendulkar at that young age gave him confidence and he went on to become the world’s best batsmen. We’ve had a lot of inspirational captains, but I always feel Cheeka could have captained more,” Siva added.
