Is cricket a team sport?

[neeran]

Silly question on the face of it, I know... But I try to address this question "from first principles", so to speak, on my Cricket Stalker blog on blogger. Cross-posting here to get your thoughts... feel free to post comments to the blog, if you prefer. -- Neeran Karnik Is cricket a team sport? There appears to be a serious dichotomy in modern-day cricket. Over the past few decades, top-level cricket has become a serious, professional team sport. The origins of this professionalization can probably be traced to the Kerry Packer led World Series Cricket, in the 1970s. Before that, in most cricket-playing countries barring England, the game was not a lucrative career alternative, even for Test players. The Packer revolution changed all that. Now consider that there are probably a hundred million (more?) who play the game of cricket regularly. Of these, how many can be termed as professionals, i.e., those who earn a full-time living playing the game? Probably no more than a few thousand -- clearly, a minuscule minority of the players. Now that skewed ratio in itself doesn't imply a dichotomy in the game. Football (soccer) and basketball probably have similar ratios. But the dichotomy in the game of cricket arises from the different manner in which the game is played by amateurs vs. professionals. Perhaps a more accurate categorization would be recreational players vs. competitive players. So what is this dichotomy I'm talking about? One way to think about it is, whether the players treat cricket as a team sport or an individual pursuit. At the professional level, as also in competitive leagues such as inter-office tournaments (like the Times Shield in Mumbai) or inter-club tournaments (like the Kanga League), cricket is clearly a team sport. It is generally played for the primary purpose of winning. If the players can enjoy themselves in the process, well and good. If not, too bad. They're getting paid for doing a job, after all. Now in order to achieve the goal of winning, the players must play as a team, with all the attendant sacrifices of the individual self to the team goal, etc. Contrast this with recreational cricket, the kind that you and I play - or used to play, more accurately, in my case! - with the neighbourhood kids. The focus in such cricket is typically, squarely on the self! If I fancy myself as a batsman (most kids seem to), I would probably do my best to get the strike and keep it! If I'm a bowler, I would keep bowling for as long as the guys will let me. A bowler gets replaced when someone else really wants to bowl, not necessarily based on some tactical decision. In recreational cricket, you enjoy the game by virtue of doing what you like doing, not what the team happens to need at that stage. Is this a bad thing? I don't think so. Certainly, it doesn't quite impart the lessons in life that kids need to learn. But hey, the recreational cricket field isn't necessarily the place for learning all of life's lessons. Those are better learned in competitive cricket (or any other sport, especially a team sport). If kids manage to have a good time playing the game in recreational mode rather than competitively, so be it. Now I'm about to make an even stronger statement - cricket, in its basic form, is inherently more of an individualistic sport than a team sport! Fundamentally, the game pits ONE batsman against ONE bowler, at a time. A batsman succeeds almost purely due to his or her own ability to bat. Similarly a bowler succeeds by his ability to get the batsman out - although for several of the modes of dismissal, he does benefit from the presence of his teammates as fielders. Consider the game from first principles. Bowlers bowls, batsman hits. Bowler aims to get the batsman out by hitting the stumps or inducing a catch. Batsman aims to score runs by hitting the ball as far from the pitch as he can, and running until the ball is thrown back. Fielders aim to stop the ball and throw it back towards the stumps, as quickly as possible. That's the basic game, with 'bowled', 'caught' and 'run out' being the fundamental modes of dismissal. Everything else is progressively derived from that foundation. For example, the LBW dismissal is necessary only to deal with the blatant use of the pads to avoid the 'bowled' dismissal. Most of the other dismissals, and Laws, have been layered on over time primarily for use in competitive cricket. Is 'timed out' ever necessary in recreational play, for example? Laws dealing with rolling the pitch, or using a new ball after 80 overs, etc. are only needed in the competitive game. Now most competitive players start off in recreational mode as kids, like everyone else. They need to change their game, inculcate the team spirit, the winner's attitude, etc. along the way. The few that succeed in doing this, in addition to having natural talent of course, make it as professional cricketers. But somewhere deep down there is still the innate sense of playing an 'individual' game. That's why individual statistics and records are so integral to top-class cricket. That's why centuries and five-wicket hauls are given so much importance in judging a player's career. Cricket's sibling baseball is very similar in that respect - if anything, it's even more statistics-laden than cricket! Compare cricket and baseball with say, football or volleyball. The conclusion is obvious - some games are inherently, fundamentally, individualistic games even when played in a team setting. Others are inherently, fundamentally team games. Perhaps we expect a bit too much team spirit of our international stars. Perhaps it's not quite right to declare on a batsman in the nineties (or 190s, as Sachin Tendulkar fans will doubtless point out!). Srinath did exactly the right thing by not attempting to get a wicket when Kumble had a ten-fer in sight. And Manoj Tiwari needs to be severely chastised for denying Badrinath a century, by deliberately bowling wides, in the recent Ranji quarterfinal! Of course sometimes the individualistic streak can extend to selfishness - Boycott was accused of that, for example, especially when it came to running out his partners! But in most cases, I believe the quest for individual glory is acceptable because it's intrinsic to the game, and thus, usually contributes towards team goals anyway.

[Lurker]

This reminds me of the mock GD discussion we used to have during college daya (for campus interview preparation). On one such occassion the topic was - Is cricket a team game? Somehow the topic veered into Kapil Dev's exploits and I raised the issue that about 50% of his wickets were either lbw or clean bowled. To which a friend countered with - But that means other 50% were due to his team members and hence cricket is a team game. My counter reply was that Kapil Dev had actually lost twice the number of wickets due to dropped catches(in a wicket-less 3 test series in Sri Lanka he had almost a dozen catches missed in the slips) and had his team members actually supported him his stats would be so much better. Although I argued against it(more to act as Devil's Advocate really) then, I have no doubt cricket is a team game. You have to look at dominant sides and you will see that team has triumphed over individual contributions. Lillee's 355 wickets owed a lot to Rod Marsh. Waqar's strike rate owed a lot to Wasim Akram. Harbhajan's agrression has a lot to do with support from Ganguly and so on. In the end a chain is only as strong as the weakest link. xxx PS: Good first post and welcome aboard.

[Rajan]

Cricket is a perfect team game... Yes, just take the case of New Zealand team of some 18 months back. Man for Man, they were certainly not equal with Australia. but led by an astute captain, Stepehen Fleming and spearheaded by an aggressive Shane Bond, they had Australia on tenter hooks, especially in one dayers.the NZ team always punched more heavier and higher than their combined weight.they definitely proved that cricket is a team game. even Saurav Ganguly was able to make an indian team compete on par , in fact if not for parthiv patel's goof ups, had almost won the series downunder against a much better australian team than the one we defeated in india recently.The team gelled under him and players like Dravid, Sehwag and Harbhajan were able to give their 100%. Ranatunga brought about a stunning world cup win with his underrated team with not many great bowlers and unpredictable batsmen. as long as Ranatunga was at the helm, they were a powerful team with lot of self belief. even the current Zimbabwae team which might have been picked out of 300 odd players, who are not paid like our cricketers or who do not enjoy facilities and coaching like other international teams, had given the sri lankans a run for their moeny in the recent 5 one day matches. any other team could have won 2 matches and a slightly better team would have won the series.there were decent performances from a few but as a team they were great in fielding,competitive in bowling. we may not remember the NZ and Zimboks, but we wud be thrilled with a 100 by sachin even in a drawn test.we like heroes !

[Macj]

Only when you win, when you lose everyone plays for themselves, true for all teams especially Pakistan.

[neeran]

As I'd mentioned in the original post, top-level cricket (international, and other professional cricket) certainly requires teamwork in order to be successful. So I'm sure you could quote many examples of teams that have performed better than the individual stats/profiles would have you believe. Nevertheless, if you consider the game as it's played by the teeming millions, I still contend that it's more of a contest of individual skills than a team sport (a la football or hockey).

[Lord]

As I'd mentioned in the original post, top-level cricket (international, and other professional cricket) certainly requires teamwork in order to be successful. So I'm sure you could quote many examples of teams that have performed better than the individual stats/profiles would have you believe. Nevertheless, if you consider the game as it's played by the teeming millions, I still contend that it's more of a contest of individual skills than a team sport (a la football or hockey).

football,hockey is also an individual sport at street level.i have seen players not pass the ball n shoot themselves,even tho the other player is in a better position to score,simply bcoz they want to score a goal themselves

[Chorazin Reto]

Most definitely, one of the best team sports.