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[KKIRANK61]

For a long time we indians were living a 'century' culture in cricket. Now a days it is slowly changing to 'win' culture. It was gavaskar who by his 'century' making habit; has inculcated this culture in india. People were mad to see his hundreds rather than a result in a match. Those days tests were more common features than ODIs of course. On many instances it was evident that the match was sure to be a draw right before the start, but still it was house full to see a gavaskar hundred. People were pleased to see his hundred sometimes on a fourth day and in first inngs !! Later that culture was nourished by SRTs and RDs etc. By that time a 'must win' kind ODIs have become more common. But still we ( our players ) being from century / runs culture; were a confused lot when it came to extracting wins in ODs. We do won ODIs in the past but very few of them of a nail biting category. In fact we were masters in squandering the advantage and surrendering a winning position, a harakiri it was called as. We were masters of miscalculations during the death overs. We use to distribute batting opportunities to the entire team by sacrificing wkts after scoring 50s and 60s.
Until recent times when, dhoni started batting down the line, to stabilize the inngs to the extent that it results into calculated wins, on several occasions. Had he been from 'century' culture, he would have utilized his talent to score centuries by batting up the order, irrespective of match result. On the other hand a SRT or a SMG should have utilized their skills by batting at no 5 or 6 where it matters the most, when it comes to batting in a calculative manner during the high pulse, tense nerve- death overs. Instead they use to leave the match in the hands of less privileged batters of lower order, at the cost of achieving personal landmarks. Todays theory says that a set batsman should bat till the end to extract max advantage of his inngs. No wonder MSD has increased india's win percentage in recent times than in the past, ie before his era.
Clearly today we are into a different culture, a 'win' culture, where people are slowly experiencing/ understanding (?) the glamor of a win over that of personal landmarks. ( of course there are still millions who are are on leave along with SRT, and are awaitng a 100th 100 )

[dhruvdeepak]

cant argue with results!!

[LosingNow]

Excellent post KKK

I am reading this book Scorecasting (http://www.amazon.com/Scorecasting-Hidden-Influences-Behind-Sports/dp/0307591794/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1319739106&sr=1-1) .. and one of the things they looked at was the drivers behind a sportsperson's (across a variety of sports) performance and behavior.

This "century" culture - generally called as the "round number milestone" culture is prevalent in other sports too.

In Baseball, batters try to go for individual .300 average when they are at .299 because that difference can mean up to 2% difference in salary (Avg baseball salary is $3.4million.. .300 avg batsman gets $6.5million). Similarly batsmen with 100 RBI season (vs 99 run seasons), 20 or 30 home run seasons (vs 19 or 29 home run seasons) and pitchers with 20 wins (vs 19 wins) get a distinct milestone premium in their contracts. Same happens in NFL, where rushers with 1000 yds per season get a premium over 999 yards.

I think this premium exists in cricket too .. not necessarily directly through salary but through non-field activities (endorsements etc) related earning potential (due to enhanced reputation) ... and it must have been more prevalent in the past (SG's era) when the only "real" source of income was through non-field activities (endorsements etc)

[vijay]

Nice post KK. Slightly differ with you on a couple of things. SMG came in an era where LOSING was the most likely outcome. The DRAW was an improvement, not a foregone conclusion. Also, in test matches- towards the end of his career he expressed a desire to bat in the middle order, but that was never accomodated because India had no good replacements for the opener's slot. As far as ODIs go- SMG did not get the hang of it until pretty late in his career. The strategy of how to best use the openers, middle order was nowhere near as evolved as it is now. They scored at rates that are seen in many test matches today.
SRT moved from the middle order to the opener's slot, and has been a huge contributor to India's success in ODI games. He plays great there. Would not be as good at #6.
All that said, Dhoni is great at what he does. We've been lucky to be part of an era where SRT's and Dhoni's careers have intersected. 

[Cover Point]

WN, that premium is actually more direct in cricket where stats are king.

How many times have we heard arguments (specially from gangulians) about "How many 50's or 100's has player X scored in the last Y years? "

Thats the problem with these people. Over reliance on meaningless stats.

[sudzz]

Well said KKK, I think we have moved to an era where team results are paramount over individual records.

Well there was on R Dravid who put the team ahead of an individual and was castigated by all and sundry so is it any surprise that till recently all our coaches had to literally break their heads with getting a team culture going....

[KKIRANK61]

B U T .........

In the tests, we ( selectors ) are still keen on records, as it appears. Otherwise they would not have selected such a strong side for such a weak opponent. WI are struggling in BDesh, they are too raw w/o Gayle, Pollard and co. We should have fielded a young india comprising of kohlis n rainas n pujaras n rahanes etc. and still won comprehensively. we have youngsters in bowling dept, but are too safe on batting front. BCOZ we are keen on a SRT 100! n some more batting records from our beloved batters.
Another point here........ a lot is talked about low attendance in odi series due to overdose, as all say. IMO it is the absence of stars mainly SRT which is drying up the crowds. Come the tests with SRT around n all the record seeking crowd will be back, i am sure. We will see good attd in coming days, indians will never have overdose of cricket, there cant be overdose of bread (match)  n butter (records) !!
However, bread n jam ( win ) is a new dish  and sweet as well !!

[vijay]

Why age discrimination? If the Pujaras, Rainas and Kohlis are to replace the SRTs and RDs of the world- they should win it on performance, not because they are "young" and the other guys are "old". Let them fight for it. Raina got many chances, but wasn't able to lock it in. Kohli is on the verge of knocking on the door. He's doing it by scoring heavily in the ODIs etc. Tomorrow if lets say a VVS bombs, Kohli probably gets in. Thats the way it should be done. No"youth entitlement BS

[WicketView]

People have looked at stats of 100s and 50s and certainly they are not meaningfully different from a 91 or a 45. And our CP will obviously fail to remember that this was the logic used to dump Ganguly (first when the Ganguly hato brigade came on
they even used to choose the set of 'recent scores'  to some odd number, so that it conveniently started after some high scores. And in the final ouster, they brought up the logic of how many innings with no 50/100 conveniently ignoring similar non-round number innings). On the strength of that alone, it is clear why players do care somewhat about 50s and 100s. It is the market ... and as long as selectors, sports journalists and people are ignorant enough this will flourish in some form. WN's example is
a fun one (I was totally unaware of it) , showing that in sports where you can't have landmark scores, people prefer landmark averages while it is unheard of in cricket that players want an average of 51 rather than 50.7 . And while we are at it, let us also admit that in each of our professions we have similar meaningless activity, that are necessary to further our interests even though it may be that using the time to do plain work would be more beneficial.

That said, coming back to KKK's aricle, I agree with the premise that we are in a "win culture" now, but it is hardly a cause but an effect. The simple fact of the matter is tha cricket is a team game, and the better team is usually in a better position to win. For many years, we simply did not have the better team to win. In part this is because there used to be some super teams, which is not the case today. The other reason is that we did not have enough diverse and good players to match them.  The average cricket fan wants to be able to celebrate something, and if it was not a team it would be a /some certain players.  The same thing happens in other team sports like soccer. Now that we are winning, fans are also celebrating victorys.
Can you point out how many tests we have actually lost /failed to win because of century attitude alone?