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Quite apart from being ruled by the presiding deity of our times, money, English football and Indian cricket have much in common. An irrational following that equates sport to a daily soap, a ravenous media, immature might even be the right adjective, that sometimes seems disinclined to sift the irrelevant from the truly sensational, obeisance to the individual superstar and, as a consequence of these three, complete surrender to hype.

And so England would have us, and worse still their fans, believe that the World Cup cannot be won without Wayne Rooney in much the manner we kidded ourselves into thinking that no game could be won without Sachin Tendulkar.

That of course is complete nonsense and is a product of the hype that this industry thrives upon. 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.

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. Teams that believe they depend on one player alone are in danger because it means that the others are not rated; worse, the other players probably believe they aren’t good enough to win a match. 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.

Through 1998, leading up to 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, you could sense the void.

The team had players capable of rising up and taking charge but India lost. I am not sure the others were empowered. So too with Brazil at the final of football’s World Cup in 1998. 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.

Good teams play down the individual; indeed when a key player goes down, the others gather 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 on every other player becomes 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 cloaked or buried or otherwise immobilised. That is why teams with ten players on the field are sometimes more dangerous than those with a full XI.

Skill counts in sport but spirit counts for much much more.

And so, depending on which way they look at it, 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 wonderful skills those are, count for little in the face of the Rooney injury.

If instead the word going out 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 with their lives, Beckham might provide more silken crosses from the right.

And another Rooney might emerge, dare I say, will emerge. But if they continue to weep, live in lament, Sweden and Paraguay and who knows, Trinidad and Tobago, might well start celebrating.

You can see this fatal obsession with the individual in India too 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. He is still a young man, a very exciting young man, with many worlds to discover, let alone conquer. But the hype industry must have a new product.

Sania and Pathan were last Friday’s releases, this week it is Dhoni. 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!

Source:India Sports