What Nonsense!

English football and Indian cricket have much in common. An irrational public following since it wont be wrong if I say that both teams have at best been average performers. Given the public excitement and curosity,the media laps up any story and turns it into a sensational one. It seems the media considers as its religious duty to map in its news every single minute detail pertaining to the team. Right from the players underwears to the bones hidden in some deep dark corner of their body. Ofcourse all this is capped by obeisance to the individual superstar

And so England would have us, and worse still their fans, believe that the World Cup cannot be won without Wayne Rooney.Much in the same way as we kidded ourselves into thinking that no game could be won without Sachin Tendulkar. You start thinking that the hyped player is indispensable, worse still the player himself could imagine that to be the case, and start putting him above the team. The moment that happens alarm bells should start ringing and yet, they rarely do.

Well I thought football and cricket were team sports. If a particular player is indispensable to the team, then the team isn't good enough. It goes against the very definition of a team, which in sport is a collection of performers playing together. Such teams rarely win. Argentina and Napoli under Maradona maybe, but even there I am sure he inspired the others to over-perform. It wasn't Maradona himself winning matches it was Maradona inspiring everyone else to win matches. Like Imran Khan with Pakistan.

Uptil the world cup of 1999, Tendulkar was India's talisman cricketer; the country, probably the team, believed he had to win matches. When he missed a game against Zimbabwe at the 1999 World Cup, one could sense the void. The team had capable players but India lost. I am not sure the others were empowered. So too with Brazil at the 1998 World Cup final. With Ronaldo reduced to a zombie, the team came apart because they did not believe they could win. And that is why Mark Taylor told Shane Warne before the 1998 tour of India that if his team believed it was up to Warne to win the series, they would lose it anyway. And they did.

Good teams play down the individual; indeed when a key player goes down, the others gain strength. It is amazing how many times the loss of a major player makes the team perform even better because it empowers others, the additional responsibility acts as a bonding force and players play out of their skins. That is what playing sport is all about, of the human spirit rising to the challenge and discovering powers that were hitherto buried. That is why teams with ten players on the field are sometimes more dangerous than those with a full eleven. Skill counts in sport but spirit counts for much much more. Look at my fav 'team' Real Madrid, and you will know why they are trophy less for last two seasons.

Rooney's absence can either destroy England or actually make them stronger. Currently, the likes of Steven Gerrard, Frank Lampard and John Terry are being told that their collective skills, and what absolutely marvellous skills those are, count for little in the face of the Rooney injury. If instead the message delivered was: too bad, we are likely to lose Rooney but we have others who can rise to the occasion, England might have bonded like never before. They still might, Gerrard and Lampard might still play for England the roles they play for Liverpool and Chelsea, Terry and Ferdinand might defend like their lives are on stake, Beckham might provide those silken crosses from the right. But if they continue to lament, Sweden and Paraguay and who knows, Trinidad and Tobago, might well start celebrating.

There is no end to this fatal obsession with the individuals in India too. What with polls asking whether Dhoni is the new Tendulkar. He cannot be and must never be for it is in being Dhoni that his achievements will truly lie. So if Dhoni breaks a thumb a week before the World Cup of 2007, can India not win it? Like England cannot without Rooney? What nonsense!