Usually walks about lunch time on the 4th day of a test now that is early

Obviously pointless arguing with you. Even with the figures clearly pointing out that Fleming for all his supposed "great captaincy and superior tactics" fails to produce the result that every cricket captain walks out at the start of a match trying to acheive.

Victory

You are not arguing against me "sittingduck"

You are arguing against "mathematic's"

Stephen Fleming (now singulized m) does not have a positive win/loss record captaining either form of the international game.

Test matches 26 wins from 80 matches.....30.71% win ratio

One Day Int 98 wins from 204 matches....48.04% win ratio

Ricky Ponting does have a positive win/loss record captaining in both forms of the game

Test matches 31 wins from 39 matchs......79.48% win ratio

One Day Int 119 wins from 154 matches..77.27% win ratio

You are trying to make a qualitative judgement (about what a captain brings to a team). In order to bolster your case by quantitative methods (as your reference to mathematics suggests you do) you would need to find a way of quantifying two things for EACH captain:

{i} How well the side performed with the captain in question at the helm;

{ii} How well the same side could have been expected to do against the same opposition in some counterfactual situation that would provide a baseline for measuring the impact of the captain in his captaincy role.

This is the ONLY way I can see of quantifying the impact of the captain AS captain.... and as I cannot see any meaningful way of doing it I can't see the point of your mention of mathematics.

Ps. If you could come up with ANY way of extracting the impact of captaincy from win / loss records you should get published immediately: I'm pretty sure the world's statisticians would love to know how such a remarkable feat could be pulled off.

Fleming........30.7% at winning test matches

Ponting........79.4% at winning test matches

We are not arguing about a slight difference here Rachael.

It is a huge difference. Ponting on average leads the side he captains to 8 win's every 10 outing's. Fleming leads the side he captains to 3 wins every 10 outing's.

Both lead 10 other players who each have 2 arms and 2 legs.

Other than the stark difference between the pairs captaincy record by the figure's.
The major difference appears to be Fleming is afforded the luxury of a disproportionate number of excuses for his losing captaincy performances.
Perhaps Fleming's 30.7% win ratio would have been better if he had not been so willing to prematurely chase a draw. As a leader he seemed confused about what winning was.

Whilst Ponting draws more criticism for leading his team to victory.

This is tall poppy syndrome at its worst.

If you put one driver in a completely uncompetitive F1 car as produced by an uncompetitive and under-resourced team... and another driver in the best car on the track, backed by the most over-resourced team in the paddock... and the driver in the better team beats the driver in the less competitive car in 7 out of 10 races... would that necessarily mean that the driver of the uncompetitive car was the lesser driver?

As for draws and winning: a captain sets out to win a Test series... and with a preference for drawing the series to losing the series; what approach he takes in each individual game will reflect his assessment of how winning the series is most likely to be achieved - and when playing 3 tests on different grounds that will not all suit his side equally, and factoring in the occasional lost toss... any GOOD captain should ALWAYS judge the degree of risk in going for a win at any point in any particular game - knowing when to limit the damage so that the series remains in the balance or "live" for a subsequent encounter is critical.

There are heaps of uncompetitive drivers in heaps of uncompetitive F1 cars.

Maybe 1 or 2 of the many may become World Champs. But the chances are most of them are as uncompetitive as the car they drive.

I know Michael Schumacher can drive well though. He did what he had to do win

Ponting did what he had to do win

It's a bit hard to put Stephen Fleming into the same league as Ponting because his win record is only about a third of Ponting's.

If we go on your car theory Rachael. We will have more superstars in cricket than just plain stars or players.

Because every one will have a reason why they were not a Sachin Tendulkar, Shane Warne, Kevin Pieterson, Imran Kahn, Muttiah Murralitharan, Alan Donald and Viv Richards

Or in Stephen Flemings case Ricky Ponting.

As some of the others are saying, Fleming & Ponting cannot be compared by statistics alone. Ponting took over the legacy of one of the strongest batting (starting with himself) and bowling sides ever to play cricket at a time when they were brimming with confidence. Most players involved knew and had played a lot with each other and so to some extent, Ponting's captaining skills were hardly necessary except for field placings and bowling changes and I confess that I do not believe that he made best use of available resources all the time in those departments. But those resources were so plentiful that he often did not need be a brilliant captain...or even a good one....for Oz to win.

Fleming on the other hand, had a relatively weak team to sort out with the only world class pace bowler (Bond) plagued with injury. He had to mould a group of no-hopers into a respectable team and this he managed to do quite often as a matter of fact. He made the best possible use of the limited sources available to him, often with surprising results especially at ODI level. To that extent, he was the better captain of the two, although the actual end result might not reflect it.

I think Fleming has had advantages such as playing Bangladesh and Zimbabwe more often than his pre-decesors such as Coney and Howarth.

For all the hype I do not think a 30% win rate in tests is that flash. Another thing to remember is that Fleming has had New Zealands best spinner Vettori and arguably one of New Zealands best all rounders Chris Cairns in most of the teams he captained.

I think his limited overs win rate is even more disapointing considering he has had the likes of Vettori, Cairns and also Oram, Bond and Styris.

The ODI team always seemed to threaten but failed to win when needed. That I think is Fleming's biggest downfall. He did not lead his side to delivering a killer punch under his captaincy.

Ponting does.

There's no point in trying to argue with Acker he (or she) is obsessed with these meaningless statistics that tell a small part of the full story.

If anyone's willing to put forward a reasoned, sensible argument about why they think Ponting is better I'd love to hear it but to repeat win rate, win rate, win rate oi, oi, oi is pointless.

You must admit Acks that stats can be open to huge interpretation. ponting win% against Vaughan is 20% and his loss is 40%. Are you saying that makes Vaughan a better captain?