The recently concluded Champions Trophy 2025 had a lot of scientific insights apart from the obvious economic and cultural gains. This was surely a coming-of-age tournament where the Indian outfit, probably for the first time in years, moved beyond the star-power to a team-level performance. It was almost like how Australia has been playing sports for all these years, across formats and categories. That’s the Austrialisation of Indian cricket beyond the more visible signs of ruthlessness, aggression and a clinical approach towards going about the tough business. So, what exactly is Australisation and what’s it’s impact beyond the field of sports?
Apart from cricket, which is Australia’s national sport, the island country excels in football, rugby, netball, swimming and tennis. In the 2024 Paris Olympic, 460 Australian athletes competed for medals in 329 events, bagging 53 medals, including 18 gold, 19 silver and 16 bronze. In all, Australia has won 610 medals – 185 gold, 196 silver and 229 bronze – at the Olympics. That’s formidable for a country of 26 million people. It stems from the high cultural value that fitness and sports enjoy in the nation. Combine this with the aggression, determination, and never-say-die attitude of Australians, and you see them dominating the sports arena across various milieus.
But there’s another vital attribute of the sporting nation, the complete unnecessity of stardom, and it stems from a culture steep in egalitarianism and respect for freedom. The idol worship culture, which dominates India, is entirely missing there. It prioritises its processes and routines over individual talent and personal brand. And that’s why the person in leadership position seldom matters, the excellence is diffused in the team.
Very few knew Pat Cummins in India before he stormed the 2023 World Cup and claimed the prized trophy. He was just another cricketer, who was assigned captaincy; he relied on the team to pull the possible, without resorting to personal bravado. His statement during the finals, “In sport, there’s nothing more satisfying than hearing a big crowd go silent,” came not from his self-efficacy as much as the quintessential Australian attitude that permeates the lines from Allan Border, Steve Waugh, and Ricky Ponting, right through the present lot.
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While in India the statement is construed as oozing of arrogance, for Australians it’s a borderline tactic and part basic temperament. Equally bemused were fellow Indians watching the winning captain walking nonchalantly at the Australian airport, without any fanfare, and rather being at home with the characteristic treatment. It’s as if it was expected of him. And more importantly of the team with robust routines and work ethics.
I am sure it can’t be said for Indian cricket. We always pride the individuals – celebrating their milestones, infinitely opining on their playing styles, and announcing if the time to retire has come. From the Little Master to Master Blaster to Captain Cool and then Hitman and King Kohli, we are never short of sobriquets and never mind the apotheosis we routinely commit. We make superhumans out of ordinary players, thereby not only distorting reality but also weakening the processes and routines that underpin any team sport.
The star players not only take their pound of flesh but also result in rest of the team under-performing, for they are compelled to maintain the performance differential, notwithstanding the under-compensation with their own performance. It’s a research-backed assertion that stardom weakens the team, often dubbed as ‘superstar effect’, or the ‘Tiger Woods effect’. While such star players draw huge crowds and help fill the coffers, they leave the team often full of self-doubt and underperform. And once they are done, the team takes a while to get its mojo back – as was witnessed during the Sachin Tendulkar era.
From a time when millions of Indians would switch off their televisions, if not take extreme measures, at Tendulkar’s dismissal, we have come a long way. The excellence and hopes embedded in individuals are proliferated through the teams via routines, best practices, trainings, rigorous analytics and broader scrutiny. Players have become more humane, lately, with their fortunes tightly linked to what they delivered recently, and consequently the leash is short and tight.
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And all of this played out in the recently concluded Champions Trophy. In each game, we had a different hero. Sometimes it was the endurance of Shreyas Iyer, on another occasion it was the grit of K.L. Rahul, and then some late magic from Varun Chakravarthy. Considering that the world’s leading bowler, Jasprit Bumrah, was missing in the action and that Virat Kohli was out for a digit in the finals against New Zealand, we had a rather unalarming approach during the chase, which underscores that we have well and truly moved beyond the all-star era. It takes the pressure off the stars, allowing them to perform more like ordinary players, gets the rest deeply involved in the proceedings, and reduces the overall key-person risk.
What’s the insight beyond the world of sports? It’s about the perils of star talent and the virtue of robust routines and disciplined practices. It is especially true for startups or family-run businesses where a few individuals dominate the proceedings often deliberately keeping the systems ad hoc and at their own dispensation. If startups have to scale and if family enterprises have to transcend generations, it’s vital to dial back on actors and look at the background.
Pavan Soni is the author of the books Design Your Thinking and Design Your Career.
