Cultural sensitivity is the buzzword on everyone’s lips at present.
Every person, business and sporting organisation creates its own culture and expects its employees (or in the case of a person, their friends) to uphold and respect their culture.
So, what is culture?
In the sense of sport, culture is the ideas, traditions, values, behaviour and expectation of a club or organisation that is upheld both on and off the field.
All clubs expect their employees to live by their cultural values and adhere to certain standards to be a member of that club. A club’s culture directly contributes to producing excellence through its employees, its cultural expectations and its roster decisions.
A club’s employees drive the club’s culture from the owner on down. John Buchanan, head coach of the Australian cricket team for much of its golden era, set a culture of hard work, grit and determination, culminating in that now-infamous boot camp before the 2006-07 Ashes series.
He juggled, with moderate success, players with huge egos like Shane Warne, Steve Waugh and Michael Clarke and, by and large, got them all to sing from the same hymn sheet (even if Warne’s singing was slightly off-key and often laced with sarcasm).
Every single person in that great Australian side bought into the culture of excellence that was mandated by John Buchanan and enforced by Steve Waugh and the senior leadership of the Australian cricket team.
(Credit: Ben Radford/Allsport/Getty Images)
A club’s cultural expectations, enforced by senior players and captains, are key in building excellent sides. Johnathan Thurston was the epitome of excellence.
Even in his last season in the National Rugby League, he would frequently lead the kick chase down the field. Thurston had earned the right to ask others to do the hard work for him, but time and time again, he would show up the younger players by leading them down the field and working harder than anybody else.
Steve Waugh’s hard-nosed brand of leadership came from the top, and this uncompromising Australian style was the hallmark of future Aussie Test teams.
However, clubs must be willing to act when players breach their guidelines and issue bans. The Corey Harawira-Naera and Jayden Okunbor situation was dealt with effectively by the Canterbury Bulldogs, and the overturning of their bans was not so much an oversight by the Bulldogs as it was by the NRL.
Likewise, Shane Warne and Mark Waugh’s suspensions from cricket for various infractions demonstrated that Cricket Australia (or the Australian Cricket Board at the time) were prepared to take those things seriously.
Finally, a club’s roster decisions are responsible for its excellence. Imagine where the North Queensland Cowboys could be if they had held onto Viliame Kikau, Jahrome Hughes, Kalyn Ponga and Jake Clifford in addition to the likes of Jason Taumalolo?
To say that the Cowboys would be multiple premiership winners would be overstating the value of those players, but they certainly would not have finished 15th last season and would not have struggled as much as they have in recent seasons.
In the meantime, the Melbourne Storm have produced Harry Grant and Brandon Smith, both quality hookers, while recruiting Hughes and retaining Cameron Munster in their squad.
(Photo by Matt King/Getty Images)
Few clubs in the NRL recruit and retain better than the Melbourne Storm. This is one of the many reasons why the Storm are among the greatest clubs in the NRL.
In the baseball world, the New York Yankees used to buy their championships, spending big to retain the best players in the world. In more recent years, every side has turned to sabermetrics, the art of using science to predict which players will become great and try to retain them on an affordable contract.
Sides like the Oakland Athletics, and more recently, the Tampa Bay Rays and Boston Red Sox utilise this scheme to try to retain high-level talent for an affordable price or acquire potential rather than purchase the best players available. Clubs that retain the best possible roster often achieve excellence if the other two criteria are met.
In conclusion, producing excellence is not just the players’ or the coaches’ or the club’s responsibility. Producing excellence must come from a combination of all three, striving together to produce excellent results. No club can achieve success for an extended period of time without all three units, the players, coaches and club being in sync with each other.
Gibbo
Roar Pro
You're probably spot on with your timing. With the younger generation turning more to "shorter, more exciting" sports like basketball, the rise of ONLY T20 cricketers will be hastened. Sadly, it may spell the decline of Tests because part of the narrative around Tests is the storyline, but you have to delve through years and years of history to get that. But yes, when that happens, we should have plenty of data.
Paul
Roar Guru
I don't think we're more than 15 or 20 years from having guys playing T20 cricket ( or something like it), full time. Obviously we have guys like AB de V and Chris Gayle doing that, but I reckon by 2030-35, there'll be many more. Now is the time to start developing these measurement tools, then spend the next 10 or 15 years testing and refining them, so when they really become necessary, they're available. I agree the current sample size is not large, but that will change pretty rapidly, as moreguys shy away from long form to short form cricket.
Gibbo
Roar Pro
Agreed. I was hoping that the popularity of T20 leagues all over the world would have sorted something like this out by now, but evidently not. I'd say there's not enough research into how cricketers work and the skills needed to make them great cricketers to scientifically prove it. Also, baseball is one of the most over-analysed sports in existence, so that could have something to do with it as well. Plus, baseball players get around 550 at bats a season or they start over 30 games per season. That is a long time to look at a player! Cricketers switch formats so often, only play 1 or at most 2 innings, that there is not really the same raw data on each of them.
Paul
Roar Guru
I think it's only a matter of time before cricket develops it's own for of SABRmetrics. Any sport that has a lot of money involved in it's players, will want/need some sort of predictive tool that can help make calls on buying certain players. I'd have thought with the big money in IPL, they'd have something like this already, though it would only be quite crude in comparison.
Gibbo
Roar Pro
You have a point. I've said that the Red Sox are the rich older cousin in the SABRmetrics game. They still want to "cut" payroll (in other words, not pay as much as the Yankees or the Dodgers do for potential World Series wins) and get potentially the best future players. Technically, you're right that they aren't in the same boat. Give it time under their new GM, and I think you'll see the slash payroll more and utilise SABRmetrics more. That said, if they win the World Series this year (and even as a die-hard Red Sox fan I think that's unlikely, but I also thought the same in 2004 and we all know what happened there), then why change a winning formula?
Gibbo
Roar Pro
Of course, the governing bodies have to have a say. My issue is that often the governing bodies are more lenient than the actual clubs themselves. In sandpapergate, I think CA probably got Smith's punishment right, but Warner should've been banned for life and should be plying his trade as the official ball shiner in T20 or club leagues for the rest of his life. The Bulldogs and the NRL handled the Okunbor/Harawira-Naera incident very well, but then the tribunal totally stuffed the decision. SABRmetrics are fascinating to me, and I've always wondered how they could apply for cricket. The likes of Oakland and Tampa Bay that utilise it in the MLB have had mixed results, but sides like the Red Sox are trying it but on a larger budget (so it's not really SABRmetrics by that definition). Do you think they could apply to cricket as well?
DaveJ
Roar Rookie
Good points. Interesting on baseball. To nitpick a tiny bit, the Red Sox havent been in the same in the same boat as low salary clubs like Tampa and Oakland. In fact they are in the top five clubs by payroll. Interesting how culture has worked with Yankees. Good team culture when they won in the 90s. Less so in the in the 70s when Reggie Jackson and manager Billy Martin were at each other’s throats.
Paul
Roar Guru
Really interesting article, Gibbo. I like your definition of sport culture, though I think that still needs to sit under the expectations set out by the various governing bodies. In other words, there needs to be a line in the sand so we know when a player or Club is not meeting expectations shared by that sport. Your point about guys like Jonathon Thurston are spot on. He completely embraced what the Cowboys want to be; skillful footballers, who give it every thing, for every minute they're on the field. Thanks also for introducing me to SABRmetrics. I wasn't aware that existed, so did some follow up reading. It's a serious topic isn't it?