READ ALSO:

Excerpts:

You sacrificed your cricket career for academics, something that is rare these days. What do you think is the role of education in the development of a cricketer?

Why do you think so?

READ ALSO:

You have been a psychoanalyst by profession. Did that help you in dealing with a tempestuous Ian Botham in that famous Headingley Test in 1981 when he won the game with bat and ball after quitting captaincy?

Do you see a similar animal energy in Kohli too?

If you could elaborate a bit...

Do you think the role of the coach becomes important and he can't be just a yes man of the captain?

You have seen quite a few captains. Who's the best?

LONDON: You can't label too many cricketers as intellectuals, but it's not the case with legendary England captain Mike Brearley . Other than leading England successfully in one of their best phases after taking over captaincy from the tempestuous Ian Botham in the middle of an Ashes series and still getting the best out the allrounder, Brearley also wrote 'The Art of Captaincy', one of the most-read cricket books of all time. During a chat with TOI on the sidelines of the Oval Test, Brearley spoke about the role of education in a cricketer's development, what goes into the making of a good captain and what Virat Kohli should and shouldn't do as captain.From 1966 to 1970, I only played occasionally doing academic work or teaching in Newcastle University. But then we have Alastair Cook who we are celebrating today who had the opportunity to go to Durham University but he chose not to. And by 20, he played for England and from the point of view of his cricket he did the right thing. On the other hand, I have learnt that cricket can be helped by fuller education and sometimes it can be hindered by it too. Too much intellect can sometimes get in the way of becoming a good cricketer.You can start thinking too much and may be unpractically too when all you need is to clear your mind. It did happen to me as well, sometimes I would be too anxious about what is coming next and be too uptight, tense and not relaxing into a perfect calm concentration.Captaincy needs to be fairly intuitive. You can talk to somebody else and try to figure out what happens in his mind….But I wasn't a psychoanalyst back then in 1981, but I was preparing for it. I knew Botham since his debut in 1977 and it would have been much more difficult if one of his peers Bob Willis or David Gower had become the captain. It was easier for me and we were immediately in the same frank, humorous relationship that we were before. He had lost his animal energy and was bowling in a more mannered way and I helped him come out of it and encouraged him to play with the vitality that characterized his game.Absolutely. I love watching him play cricket. He is a very intelligent captain and has tremendous presence on the field. But he has so much charisma, articulacy and authority that there's a danger of him becoming authoritarian.He has got to have the capacity to tell people what to do. But if you become too authoritarian, then you are not open to other points of view. Becoming too influential can also mean that people are scared of giving you the opinion and then you don't gather in. You need to have 11 captains in the team, just that you have to be the in-charge. Having said that, I would add that Joe Root would do well to show some authority the way Kohli does. He would do well to articulate what he is looking for from his team, which I don't know if he has done enough.I agree on that -- more these days than it was in our times. Take Graham Gooch for example when he was the batting coach of England. He didn't just coach the England batsmen to score more runs, he was also dealing with their emotions in terms of determination, state of mind etc.I never saw them regularly enough. I think MS Dhoni was a great ODI captain but I am not very sure whether he was a good Test captain. He wasn't flexible enough with his tactics and I am not sure whether he was involved for long periods of time in the five-day format. But in ODIs, he was very good and he did things himself and took authority.