Curtains For Cricket's International Captains?

Mahela Jaywardene has resigned.

Shoaib Malik has been replaced.

Ricky Ponting couldn't afford to rest.

Andrew Strauss has made an inauspicious beginning to his captaincy.

By all indications it seems a bad time to captain an international cricket team.

Dhoni and Vettori are the only ones who seem comfortably ensconced in their respective saddles (if you count out the captains of Bangladesh & Zimbabwe), and I have my prayer book out for the two worthies. 

What's going wrong in world cricket? Is it the pressure? Is it the money? Or is there a genuine leadership crisis?

Mahela, if reports are to be believed, got tired of the pressures that the troubled Sri Lankan Board was exerting on him and the players. Malik never looked in control even as the one who should have been captain and is now the captain—Younis Khan—kept saying no to captaincy.

Ponting hasn't really won too many friends beyond Australia, and several Australians have called for his head as well. Cricket Australia is already sending signals to him by attempting to ease Michael Clarke into the role. Clarke, it would seem, is finding the job difficult, and his back problem has resurfaced after having been less of an issue for a while. 

Strauss is leading a divided house, an unmotivated bunch, and his predicament may have little to do with the circumstances that got him the job. The collapse has been blamed on IPL and the bounties that came the way of some of the stars, and the state of the second Test in the series has also been a strange story.

Can Dhoni and Vettori keep the flag flying for captains? Or will they test the fickle nature of boards and selectors all over again? Time will tell whatever story it wants to, and as a fan of both these men, one hopes that the forthcoming games are evenly contested. Else the group picture at the 2011 World Cup may have some faces that world cricket doesn't know as of today. Or not too well.