It was my turn to make the teas one Saturday, so I was in the club kitchen buttering piles of bread. It was lucky I got there early because as I buttered away one of the selectors walked in.

"Hi David, you know you are skippering the 2nd XI today don't you?"

It was the first I had heard, a few hours before the start of play.

In fact I had been lucky. Earlier in the season we only heard the captain was ill about 10 minutes into our innings. This happens in club cricket. It's one of those things.

What do you do if you are the unlucky soul who has to take up the slack? It's not an easy task.

Good captains are above the team. If you are a member of the troops it's much harder to get that, especially if it's a last minute thing.

On the other hand, some players are leading long before they have been made captain officially.

The difference is that leaders lead whether they are formally captain or not. If you inspire, motivate, listen, have ideas and garner respect then you are already a leader.

These traits will make you more likely to become a stand in captain too, so let's assume you at least partially have these skills. What happens on the day of the match?

Club captaincy is about more than just setting the field and batting order.

If you are a stand in skipper make sure you find out every detail you can of what is required. This can be arrangements like travel to away matches or collecting tea money. It can also be cricket related stuff like speaking to the groundsman/curator for pitch advice and welcoming a visiting team as a good host.

This is the practical stuff. It gets more difficult when it comes to your own team.

Some players may already be on the back foot. They might feel overlooked as captain themselves. To compensate you could regularly consult them for advice, even if you have already decided what you are going to do. It helps to boost egos when you are facing a hard-done-by team mate.

You also want to take care with your own ideas. Changing a well established batting order might seem like a good idea to you, but you only have one game to see if it works. It's better to be more conservative when you have the job for an afternoon. Save the crazy ideas for when you have the job all year.

You can call on the advice of bowlers in the field especially. Experienced bowlers not only know what fields they want for themselves, they are usually quick at picking up weaknesses in batters for you to exploit. Talk to them often.

That said you still want to be in command. Captaincy by committee never works well. Take on as much advice as you can then make your own decision and stick with it. This will give you more respect than letting others do the job for you.

As a stand-in you have a difficult balance to find.  Egos, experience and practicalities all bear down on you. The best you can do is keep a light hand on the tiller and hope your groundwork of being a leader before you were captain can carry you through.

What are your experiences as a stand in skipper?

Image credit: kev747

Want to be a better captain? Learn from the best with the interactive online course Cricket Captaincy by Mike Brearley.