Imran Khan wins ICC poll for captains whose game rose with leadership

Pakistan’s cricket legend and now Prime Minister Imran Khan Wednesday won a Twitter poll that the ICC has started for captains whose game rose with leadership.

The poll was launched a day earlier by the ICC with the options of current India captain Virat Kohli, former South African captain AB de Villiers, current captain of Australia’s women Team Meg Lanning and former Pakistan team captain Imran Khan.

“The indomitable Imran Khan has emerged as the highest-rated captain, beating Virat Kohli, Meg Lanning, and AB de Villiers in the poll,’ declared ICC on Twitter.

#CaptainsMonth

The results are out!

You've decided the best ‘pacesetter’ ✨

The indomitable Imran Khan has emerged as the highest-rated captain, beating Virat Kohli, Meg Lanning, and AB de Villiers in the poll 🙌 pic.twitter.com/HAX4piHmeB

— ICC (@ICC) January 13, 2021

Imran Khan, who is also the current prime minister of the country, had a test average of 25.43 with the bat and 25.53 with the bowl in Tests. However, the world cup winning skipper’s Test average was 52.34 and bowling average was 20.26 when he was captaining.

He was the only player in the list who has been included for his performances in the longer version of the game, which is considered to be the true and genuine form of the game of cricket to gauge a player’s true ability in cricketing skills. Whereas, no other captain in the red-ball game was good enough to be included for the polls and the ICC has to bring in the other competitors on the basis of their performances in the white-ball cricket.

A total of 536,346 votes were cast in the poll with Imran Khan securing 47.3% of the votes. India's Virat Kohli was a close second in the poll and received 46.2% of the votes. On the other hand, AB de Villiers bagged 6% of the votes while Meg Lanning ranked last after securing 0.5% of the votes.

The ICC said that for these four players the captaincy stood out for them and became a blessing for them. It said the players averages improved when they became leaders of their dressing room.

The ICC tweets show that Virat Kohli’s average shot up to 73.88 from 51.29 in ODIs when he took over the captaincy.

On the other hand, South Africa’s Ab de Villiers average was 45.97 when he was not the captain but during the captaincy, the average shot up to 63.94.

Meanwhile, Meg Lanning also saw a spike in her average when she became the captain. The stats show that when she was not the captain she was averaging 43.87 but while playing as the skipper her average rose to 60.93.