Does culture influence a test team's performance

[Kirkut]

Over the last 6-7 years of following cricket, I've noticed that test cricket is quintessentially British.

Teams like West Indies(till 1990s), England, Australia and South Africa perform more consistently as a unit and tend to win more matches both away and at home when compared to the sides of the subcontinent. Is this due to cultural differences? West Indies, Australia, England and South Africa have nearly the same culture and they tend to understand the sport much better than subcontinent sides. Don't get me wrong, our subcontinent sides have produced brilliant talents but they do not perform consistently as unit compared to the non subcontinent ones.

 

[NasserFan207]

Over the last 6-7 years of following cricket, I've noticed that test cricket is quintessentially British.

Teams like West Indies(till 1990s), England, Australia and South Africa perform more consistently as a unit and tend to win more matches both away and at home when compared to the sides of the subcontinent. Is this due to cultural differences? West Indies, Australia, England and South Africa have nearly the same culture and they tend to understand the sport much better than subcontinent sides. Don't get me wrong, our subcontinent sides have produced brilliant talents but they do not perform consistently as unit compared to the non subcontinent ones.

Uhh, what?

 

[Kirkut]

Uhh, what?

They do. West Indian culture is heavily influenced by the Spanish and English, same goes for South Africa and Australia. India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka still follow the same culture which existed before the British rule even though their lifestyles have changed.

 

[NasserFan207]

They all have their own unique cultures. British influence died about 100 years ago, and if its still there it doesn't aid sporting prowess thats for sure.

 

[fredfertang]

When I first saw Pankaj Singh bowling last week it struck me how "English" he looked, and indeed all the other Indian players. Rahane has really impressed me but there's nothing distinctive about him. It's very different from my first memory of Indian cricket which dates back to 1971. Gavaskar, Vishwanath, Engineer, Abid Ali, Solkar, Bedi and Chandra played the game in a totally different way to the England players - Venkat and Wadekar were the only two who I recall having an "English" technique - Pakistan were over that summer too and I'd say exactly the same about Mushtaq, Asif, Zaheer, Sadiq, Majid and Intikhab, the quicker bowlers looked a bit more English, even if Asif Masood did have that rather odd action, but he could have been English - but that distinctive sub continental style seems to have gone now - that loss of "identity" started with Imran and Kapil - the sides are stronger now, but the game has lost something - is it cultural, or just a result of there being much more coaching and hence standardisation?

 

[wpdavid]

Yes but it's not just a case of ethnicity. The Southern Hemisphere sides have a different set of attitudes to the English, which imo has something to do with why Aus and SA are usually at or near the top of the pile, and why NZ generally punch above their weight. That being said, I'd struggle to articulate exactly what the different cultures entail, but I'm pretty sure it's a factor.

 

[ImpatientLime]

Australia, culture. LOL.

 

[Burgey]

Yes but it's not just a case of ethnicity. The Southern Hemisphere sides have a different set of attitudes to the English, which imo has something to do with why Aus and SA are usually at or near the top of the pile, and why NZ generally punch above their weight. That being said, I'd struggle to articulate exactly what the different cultures entail, but I'm pretty sure it's a factor.

The initial Australian attitude to cricket was, probably, developed as a little brother wanting to show up bigger brother, and became a kind of flint edged hardness over time.

SA, NZ and Australia also have in common a geographical remoteness from the dominant older culture which they pretty much emulated. They were remote, tough places so there's a certain roughness and pragmatism which developed in the early years. Maybe there was a lot of that in cricket and sport, which then became the culture of those sports in those places.

 

[uvelocity]

amazed the little sri lankans got off scot free on that one burgey

 

[Burgey]

Well I don't really purport to know a huge amount about culture there, but my understanding is the subcontinent had a huge indigenous population with a well established culture that continued to be a big part of society there after the place was colonised.

I'm not in anyway down playing the significance of indigenous cultures in SA, NZ or Australia in saying that. But aboriginal culture here was plainly subjugated in a big way, and the population was widely dispersed and not as large as on the subcontinent as I understand it.

 

[BoyBrumby]

Indigenous Australians seem to feature in pretty much any given team of any of the big three football codes in Oz, but hardly ever in cricket.

There's probably a Sports Science dissertation in there somewhere as to why this should be.

It can't be purely an Anglo thing either; the surnames of plenty of recent Australian internationals (Katich, Kasprowicz, Hauritz, Krejza, Hilfenhaus, etc) betray their non-British antecedents.

 

[silentstriker]

It's a very interesting question - I think there is something to it. The subcontinent does not have a sporting culture at all - look at their woeful showing in the Olympics for example. For the vast majority of its history, you were pretty much playing the Bombay Upper Class XI when you played India. And it was more a leisure activity that those with enough time, money and resources could afford (very much smaller than the top 1% of the population). Even now, there is a huge disproportionate showing from some areas. Bangladesh is very much like that even still, with Dhaka dominating. And the type of players that come from those backgrounds generally do look at sport very differently.

 

[BoyBrumby]

I'm not sure I agree India doesn't (or didn't) have a sporting culture at all; they used to more or less rule the Olympic hockey tournament until (someone on CW claims at least) the move from turf to artificial pitches.

It could just be that subcontinental sporting talent is channelled exclusively towards bat and ball sports; along with cricket and hockey the Khans of Pakistan were untouchable at squash for a couple of decades.

Genetics must play a factor too; despite a large and well established community of South Asian origin in the UK there's only been one (I think) Premiership footballer born in Britain of subcontinental origins, Michael Chopra, and he had a white mum too.

 

[silentstriker]

Whats the interest like though in that community? You just have to look at the average build of a South Korean vs. North Korean to look at the difference environment plays vs. genes. Not saying they don't, but those things are very hard to quantify.

In terms of sporting culture, you just have to look at the statistics - most people in India simply don't have access. You just have to look at the teams of the past and it will be easily apparent how all the players come from maybe two or three cities, and virtually all from extreme wealth relative to the average person.

 

[silentstriker]

I don't know about the Indian hockey teams of the 20s and 30s but frankly I'd be surprised if they were anywhere close to representative of the society at large in terms of makeup - I would venture that it too was made up of players from wealthy areas of Bombay, Calcutta, etc.

 

[silentstriker]

To prove my point, here's the field hockey team that won the 1928 Olympics...Field hockey at the 1928 Summer Olympics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Several anglo-Indians, several more from prestigious expensive upper class places like the "Oak Grove School", etc.

 

[BoyBrumby]

Maybe, but back then amateur sports were largely the preserve of the moneyed elite globally (British athletics greats like Harold Abrahams (1924 100m gold medallist) and Roger Bannister (first sub-four minute mile) were both Oxbridge educated and, by profession, a lawyer and a surgeon respectively) and it was the Indian elite who dominated, not the British, German or American.

 

[silentstriker]

Sure, but unlike in the west, sports in India (and other parts of the subcontinent) remained in the upper class exlusive circles long after it spread to all parts of society elsewhere.

 

[smash84]

I don't think the khans of squash were elites though and collectively they ruled squash for around 3 decades I reckon (cbf looking it up)

 

[Burgey]

Indigenous Australians seem to feature in pretty much any given team of any of the big three football codes in Oz, but hardly ever in cricket.

There's probably a Sports Science dissertation in there somewhere as to why this should be.

It can't be purely an Anglo thing either; the surnames of plenty of recent Australian internationals (Katich, Kasprowicz, Hauritz, Krejza, Hilfenhaus, etc) betray their non-British antecedents.

Good point. I don't know if the lack of aboriginal representation is a result of a deliberate exclusion, or because there's less opportunity; or whether it's because by the time cricket became less Anglo, the disadvantage of indigenous people was so firmly entrenched at an economic level that the damage was done.

As you say, there's a thesis there somewhere, waiting to be written.