How Pakistan's World Cup captains performed

New Delhi: A captain in cricket is totally different from that of football or hockey. Here you need to develop and change your strategies time to time according to the situation. Due to the smaller coaching/management role played out by support staff, as well as the need for greater on-field decision-making, the captain of a cricket team typically shoulders more responsibility for results than captains of other sports.Most good cricket captains have also been inspirational and innovative thinkers. In fact, sometimes this quality has taken precedence over cricketing ability.India TV, in its series on captains of World Cup teams, takes a look at Pakistan's captains:Asif Iqbal had the honour of leading Pakistan to cricket's first two global encounters, consecutively in 1975 and 1979. Under Iqbal's captaincy, Pakistan manged to reach the cup's semi-finals in the '79 edition.Imran Khan replaced Iqbal to lead the team at the 1983 event, which was won by India. Imran had two more shots at glory, first in 1987, then in 1992, where he turned a bunch of talented young players into world beaters. Pakistan's triumph in '92 after a historic win against England in the final, remains it biggest cricketing moment to date and made stars out of Wasim Akram, Inzamam-ul-Haq and Mushtaq Ahmed among others.Before Imran left, he had mentored Wasim Akram to be his successor. Akram later moved on to become one of best bowler in the world and was known as "Sultan of Swing". Wasim led Pakistan in WC '96, which was hosted by Pakistan, and the '99 WC, hosted by England. Pakistan failed to defend its title in '96 and suffered a miserable loss to Australia in the final of '99 WC also under Akram's captaincy.Cricketing experts often cite Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis as the best bowling pair in the history of the game. But just like Akram, Younis too was unable to lead Pakistan to glory when handed the reins before the 2003 World Cup. For the first in the history of the event, Pakistan failed to progress past the first round.Inzamam-ul-Haq, the highest run-scorer for Pakistan in ODIs, was arguably its best batsman after the retirement of legendary Javed Miandad. He took charge of a dispersed side which suffered great humiliation at the '03 WC and put a sense of belief into a relatively new team. At the eve of the 2007 WC, Pakistan were left without pacers Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammad Asif and later went onto suffer an embarrassment of being knocked out of the event by Ireland.Thrown out of the competition in the initial stages for two consecutive times, Pakistan had a point to prove. The WC 2011, jointly hosted by India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, saw a new, energised Pakistan team with allrounder Shahid Afridi as its leader. Although Afridi had a great tournament personally, Pakistan lost to arch rival India in the semi-finals, a defeat most fans blamed on Misbah-ul-Haq, the team's next captain.The 2015 WC is just months away now and with Pakistan's tour of Sri Lanka ending in disaster, it is unclear whether Misbah-ul-Haq will be retained as the skipper for the big event. Most former players have backed Afridi as the top choice to takeover from Misbah.