Team Culture

"Aura", "class", "x-factor": all names we give to the special individual performance or distinctive sporting team, to capture an essence we struggle to put our finger on, yet that is unmistakably present. Lately they have been joined by a new vogue word, "culture", a sort of upwardly mobile, perhaps more professional, version of what would once have been called "team spirit". In cricket it aims to put a name to the community created by the members of a team that makes them hard to beat - although it is more often defined in the negative - a weakness identified as the outcome of a "poor culture". The word was used 15 times in the Argus review in the context of it being "poor" and needing to "improve".

What are the qualities of a "good" sporting team culture? In my experience, positive cultures have always been defined by the willingness of players to sacrifice their own personal pride, ego and attitude for the betterment of the greater team performance. It is understood that there will be conflicts between the interests of the individual and the collective, but also that in these cases there can only be one winner, and that a course once decided will be followed. Triumphs are shared; mistakes are met without blame but with an understanding that they will be rectified with no excuse offered. Talent and skill, of course, are still the non-negotiables. But outside of the most gifted teams, there will always be a need to extract more than the sum of the parts.

Not every sport places the same emphasis on inner cohesion. It's no fluke that it was football that produced the most famous counter to the cult of culture, the remark by Spurs' Steve Archibald that "team spirit is a chimera glimpsed in a moment of victory". It has been proven in multiple studies that the greatest determinate of success in the English Premier League is money. It is a game constructed around the excelling of individual genius, mainly because the currency of scoring is so high: a single flash