Boot-camp experience just not cricket
Steve James, writing in the Daily Telegraph , says pre-series excursions like boot camps to get the players to gel better may not achieve the desired results
Siddhartha Talya
25-Feb-2013
Steve James, writing in the Daily Telegraph, says pre-series excursions like boot camps to get the players to gel better may not achieve the desired results. Cricket, he says, is an individual sport played in a team environment and the togetherness that such exercises try to achieve is seen more in rugby.
Team spirit, eh? Generally I’m with former Tottenham striker Steve Archibald on this one, even if his description – “an illusion glimpsed in the aftermath of victory”– has become a hackneyed cliché. But then cricket is essentially an individual sport played in a team environment. Selfishness often sits comfortably within its dressing rooms. The Australians spout their propaganda about mateship, that machismo forged by miners and bushmen in the harsh conditions of the late 19th century, whereby a man had to do everything within his powers to stand by his mate. But I have only really seen that tightness in rugby dressing rooms.
Siddhartha Talya is a senior sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo