Skinny on ‘real’ team spirit, Dhoni?

As far as grand gestures go, last week Mahendra Singh Dhoni almost matched Barack Obama’s address to the Islamic world in impact. I am being facetious of course, but the Indian cricket captain’s decision to parade all his players in front of the press corps the other day to rebut a media reports was astonishing to say the least and perhaps unprecedented in modern sport.

Stories about differences between Dhoni and his deputy Virender Sehwag could be the figment of a fertile imagination, and I can understand the consternation and disappointment of a captain (and his team) that this should happen on the eve of a major tournament. Yet such melodramatic gesture suggests miscast pique rather than the solidarity show Dhoni may have intended. 

If anything, this revealed hypersensitivity — not strength. If the story is rubbish, it deserved contempt and should be ignored; if true, no amount of strutting ‘team spirit’ for public consumption is a solution, because the proof of the pudding
still lies in the performance, not in theatrics.

Personally, I don’t believe that Dhoni’s team is riven with problems. Indeed, it would be very surprising if this is the case considering that the main protagonists are two fairly easy-going individuals who still seem committed to plainspeak and capable of resolving issues amicably.

The overt show of bonding could be a manifestation of the insecurity of being superstars. So much rides on these players these days — from credibility to big money — that anything even remotely disruptive is seen as major threat. The recent expulsion of Andrew Symonds is a case in point.

But Dhoni need not be unduly worried. Team spirit in sport, as in most other endeavours, is best established by performance despite the differences that might exist between players. International sport, like governments and corporate, is the playing field of adults who can — and must — have sharp opinions. That can provide for healthy debate and ideas which if sensibly collated can add up to winning strategies.

It is a mistaken belief that team spirit implies its constituents must all be on the same plane. What it really means is that independent opinions are crucial, but that the common objective is paramount. However, if this objective is not well defined or understood it can lead to subversion and consequent disaster. There are several examples in Indian cricket itself where individual differences — even amongst key players — have not necessarily made a difference to the result.

For instance, India won the 1983 World Cup when relations between Kapil Dev and Sunil Gavaskar were not exactly hunky dory.  Two years later, Gavaskar was captain and Kapil Dev is start player when India won the World Championship of Cricket in Australia in 1985, and it is not that these two had become bosom buddies in the interim. For good measure, Kapil Dev led the team to a famous win in the Rothman’s Cup in Sharjah a few weeks later.

This is not a peculiarly Indian trait I might add. Don Bradman’s team through the 30s and 40s kept winning despite being riddled with internal dissensions, the great West Indians of the 70s and 80s in which there were several differences between Clive Lloyd and his superstars like Viv Richards and Malcolm Marshall, and Imran Khan’s 1992 World Cup wining side, which revolted almost immediately after the tournament. Consider these and a clearer picture emerges about the co-relation between team spirit and success.

I am not a cynic, but puerile expressions of team spirit don’t really matter, however genuine the intent. Now, if Dhoni and his team had to come close to even winning the Twenty20 World Championships, the Indian captain might discover that the same people who had written about dissensions in the team would be singing hossanahs about its spirit. For, what succeeds like success?

In another context, and being facetious once again, that would hold true of Obama too.