Cricketainment: India's Toxic Obsession With Idolizing Stars Over Winning Teams
Cricketainment: India's Toxic Obsession With Idolizing Stars Over Winning Teams
"In the name of God, go!"
These were the exasperated words of veteran Indian commentator Harsha Bhogle after watching his countrymen suffer yet another abject failure at the 2022 T20 World Cup. With a global trophy having cruelly slipped through their fingers once more, Bhogle's plaintive cry captured the perpetual heartbreak Indian cricket inflicts upon its billion-plus fans.
Just months earlier in June 2022, India's famed batting titans also failed to record a single century across 2 Tests as they lost the rescheduled 2021 World Test Championship final in humiliating fashion to New Zealand by 8 wickets. At the exact same venue in Southampton, it evoked traumatic memories of their equally ignominious exit from the 2019 ODI World Cup semifinals just two years prior.
These repeated multi-format debacles at the highest level beg an existential query: Why does the supremely talented Indian team continue faltering so miserably on the biggest stages despite boasting a galaxy of glamorous superstars? The harsh reality is that India has not won a single major ICC world event across any format since the 2013 Champions Trophy - a full decade of underachievement.
I argue that a major root cause stems from Indian cricket's toxic culture of obsessing over idolizing individual celebrity rather than cultivating balanced teams optimized for consistent collective performances and trophies. This warped national mindset centered on glamorizing stars and mass entertainment through the lucrative IPL - rather than pragmatic planning for major tournaments - has completely compromised the squad's ability to make smart decisions to create winning combinations.
Cricket is a team sport where the sum must be greater than its parts. Yet India has been deluded into chasing superstar flair over diligent teamwork, resulting in its constant implosions on the biggest stages. With gigantic riches now prioritized over championships, toxic individualism has infected Indian cricket's very identity. Only by slaying this illusion of ephemeral celebrity can the team reclaim its deserved perch atop the world.
Rampant Celebrity Bloat
The seeds of Indian cricket's debilitating fixation on idolizing individuals were sown with the inaugural Indian Premier League in 2008. As the IPL audaciously transformed cricket into a glitzy commercial spectacle, name recognition and hype immediately became prized over genuine ability to contribute towards team outcomes.
This allowed several ageing superstars well past their prime like Sourav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid and Sachin Tendulkar to continue commanding massive IPL salaries based purely on reputation and brand appeal. While such former icons deserved respect for their records, franchises shelled out egregious sums not based on present ability to help their teams achieve success, but merely for commercial star power.
As commentator Ayaz Memon remarked: "IPL valuation determines whether you are a big name even before proving any ability to consistently deliver match-winning performances for teams in the present."
This warped calculus prioritizing celebrity over output quickly permeated into Indian cricket's philosophy for picking national teams across formats. For instance, despite years of underwhelming returns failing to guide India to prestigious trophies, megastar Virat Kohli kept getting unconditionally picked solely based on his stratospheric IPL earnings and reputation as a commercial draw.
As recently as the 2022 Asia Cup debacle where India failed to make the final, Kohli was automatically selected due to brand appeal rather than any pragmatic assessment of how he could provide the team a winning edge through his current form and skills.
In stark contrast, exemplary cricketers like Cheteshwar Pujara whose immense international performances never earned them global popularity cycles and IPL riches are routinely axed from the team. Tellingly, Kohli's record-shattering IPL peak of 973 runs in 2016 did not even earn him selection for India's Test tour of the West Indies that year.
Skipper Aaron Finch summed up Australia's antithetical meritocratic ethos: "We don't overreact to IPL performances, we judge purely on output in international games for the national team."
Finch's remarks underscore the philosophies teams like Australia, England and New Zealand consistently adhere to. When selecting squads for prestigious events, pragmatic output trumps reputation and brand value every time. Even all-time legends get pruned without regret if their output no longer justifies selection ahead of hungrier teammates capable of delivering greater present impact.
The numbers validate just how much India's superstar syndrome has corroded its performances on the biggest stages. Over the past decade at marquee ICC tournaments since 2013, Indian superstars with massive IPL earnings and fame have collectively averaged:
Virat Kohli - 28.4
Rohit Sharma - 31.7
KL Rahul - 24.5
Hardik Pandya - 19.5
All well below the weight of their unreal brand power and superhero auras created through IPL entertainment. In stark contrast, unheralded team players like Shikhar Dhawan (62.7), Ravindra Jadeja (44.5) and Suryakumar Yadav (58.2) have massively outperformed the marketing juggernauts, consistently delivering when it matters most for the team's cause.
Yet time and again, the Indian think-tank appears to have its judgment blinded by the magnetic aura of certain glamorous players with enormous mass following. Case in point: for the calamitous 2022 T20 World Cup campaign, the supremely out-of-form Rohit Sharma was not only persisted with as captain but even included in the playing XI purely due to his superstar pedigree despite undeniable signals it would undermine the team's chances.
As Ian Chappell bluntly put it: "The BCCI makes decisions keeping IPL franchise interests in mind rather than picking a team with the best chance of winning an ICC tournament."
Misplaced Cult of Individualism
Beyond just team selections, the real crisis stems from an unhealthy preoccupation with individualism having become Indian cricket's fundamental identity and purpose - at the expense of cultivating winning combinations aligned around elite team performance.
From the youngest age, Indian youth are conditioned to idolize and seek inspiration from specific glamorized superstars based on their personal career stats, without much regard for their impact on team's fortunes and championship pedigree.
"How many kids really grow up wanting to be like Rahul Dravid, who prioritized the team above all?" remarks commentator Sanjay Manjrekar. "They are chasing the fame and money of Kohli, Dhoni, Rohit. So that's the sort of attitude permeating the system from ages ago."
Indeed, even as established stars, many Indian cricketers seem to have internalized this same priority of cultivating a lucrative personal brand rather than purely existenting to make the team they represent richer through trophies. When batting icons like Kohli and Sharma see peers earning $2 million per IPL season largely due to immense celebrity appeal, winning championships suddenly gets reduced to a tertiary objective behind wealth and fame.
As Sourav Ganguly admits: "IPL definitely diverts priorities. Too many Indian players are motivated only by how much money and what brands they collect through it."
The conspicuous lack of collective performance cements this malaise. At recent ICC events, Indian batsmen have hogged the limelight with solitary individual knocks scoring entertaining runs devoid of championship substance:
Rohit Sharma's 140 in the 2019 World Cup semifinal loss.
Virat Kohli's 82* in the 2022 Asia Cup loss.
KL Rahul's 57 off 27 balls in the T20 World Cup 2022 semifinal exit.
While dazzling as highlights, the reality is Indian cricket keeps producing the equivalent of "world-class strikers without a team" who cannot seem to collectively coalesce despite their astronomical individual talents.
The inflated expectations and pressures created by overblown personal brands further compounds this dysfunctionality. When the feted batting superstars fail to singlehandedly live up to their bloated auras, the ensuing social media trolling, meltdowns and media frenzies cripple the whole team environment through self-doubt and implosion.
As analyst Jarrod Kimber elaborates: "The celebrity culture of Indian cricket conflicts with the grit, grime and selflessness required to win major tournaments as a cohesive unit. Personal priorities of IPL hype and wealth supersede the quest for collective national excellence across formats."
This systemically-ingrained obsession with individualism and glamour as ends in themselves - rather than means to create winning teams - represents an existential misalignment holding Indian cricket back from regaining its rightful worldwide supremacy across all formats.
Roadmap to Team Redemption
Slaying the toxic culture of rampant individualism distorting Indian cricket's priorities and performances demands a complete philosophical reset across all levels - administration, players, team culture, youth pathways and even fan expectations of what constitutes greatness. Only by reclaiming the sanctity of team success over individual glory can Indian cricket start regaining its deserved universal authority.
At the top, BCCI must officially reorient its outlook by loudly re-affirming the primacy of serving national interests over the lucrative IPL entertainment ecosystem. Concrete policy guidelines need enforcing to mandate selection decisions being made solely with the intent of creating the most balanced, potent squads for major tournaments.
Personal brand reputation and individual stats should be made completely irrelevant criteria. Instead, the selection mantra must become "Knitting Together a Champion Team" based on identifying specific role players whose skills synchronize into an unbreakable combined force. Star power should only matter insofar as it synergistically furthers the main team dynamic.
This philosophical reboot provides the perfect opening for the influential Dravid-Rohit regime to transform Indian cricket. Having already demonstrated a ruthless adherence to meritocracy and team ethics over individual indulgence, the current leadership must escalate this to an institution-wide revolution.
The dressing room culture must be reforged into an uncompromising collective furnace embodying self-accountability and 100% commitment where individual brand-building is outlawed. Underperformers must face swift exiling regardless of stardom. Conforming to precise team-first roles should be the sole expectation and ambition from both rookies and veterans.
At the same time, the player pathways and incentive structures themselves - from youth levels to domestic competitions to IPL auctions - need an overhaul to recognize and cultivate elite team contributors over mercurial individualists.
Most critically, even fans themselves must repent their idolatry of players producing "Authority on highlights" over those delivering consistent championship impact and selfless team ethos. Public admiration and following must become payoff for achieving collective glory rather than glamour and social media fads.
After all, it was the unwavering backing of the Indian public for elite team ideals that catalyzed the cricket team's meteoric rise under inspirational captains like Kapil Dev, Mohammed Azharuddin and Sourav Ganguly in previous eras. Those icons were revered not due to fleeting stardom, but sustained commitment to evolving India into a globally-feared unified force.
By collectively rejecting their self-created illusions and reconnecting with this sacred roots-level, team-first ethos once again, Indian cricket can finally exorcise the demons of individualistic excess and ephemeral glamour that have sabotaged countless World Cup campaigns.
With India's towering talent reserves remaining ever abundant and a resurging desire for greatness gaining momentum, the opportunity is ripe to conclusively slay the toxic culture of worshipping individual celebrity over championship substance. The road to rediscovering the beauty and fulfilment of becoming world-beaters through collective commitment beckons.