We have not been winning matches which means we are not really familiar to the winning culture. For the winning culture, a team culture is as important as the team itself. The Pakistan team comprises players coming from various areas of the country. Whenever a new player walks into the national side, it is seen often that instead of adopting the team culture, he brings his own to the side, and honestly speaking he is not at fault either because there is no ‘team culture’ which exists here that can help the newcomer to shape in. This ‘individual culture’ is extremely damaging for the team because it gets uglier with the passage of time, pollutes the atmosphere of the dressing room, and ultimately results in disintegration.

If the majority of players belong to a certain region in the country, the language spoken by them eventually becomes the language of the dressing room. This often makes others feel isolated and neglected and affects their performance. At one point in time, the Indian cricket team faced similar problems but the BCCI worked hard to resolve all such issues and it worked wonders for their side’s morale. To overcome all the above mentioned issues, a code of conduct is the need of the hour.

The implementation of a certain code of conduct could surely pave the way for developing a team culture which, in turn, will eliminate all kinds of groupings among the players. But it has been achieved in the past. It was Imran Khan’s era and he managed to cultivate a team culture which prevailed over everything else and did Pakistan proud. Unfortunately, it ended completely in the six to eight years of his departure.

Developing team culture is not something that is achieved overnight. Besides the captain, the coach is the key person who can achieve that, with hard work and skills. A good coach never delegates this responsibility to the players. All over the world, when the coaches talk about ‘turning a team around,’ they recognise they need to change the team culture.

If a coach shows keen interest in the performance of the players, helps in sorting out their problems with wisdom and patience, works on their techniques, he will most likely be able to extract good result. The players will take pride in their achievements, in being a part of the team and will start believing in themselves. This could boost the decision-making process, which is the key in cricket.

There are clear signs which indicate that team culture is in tatters. Firstly, when the team is playing below its capability, when the team support staff is constantly complaining, there is visible conflict in decision making on the field and when there is little response from them at the team meetings.

Some coaches also err by not fully grasping the importance of team culture and its intricacies. If your team is experiencing internal friction, simply announcing that ‘we’ll have no more bickering in the team’ will not do anything.

In such times, one must work hard to discover what is interfering with the team culture and devise a strategy to remove the obstacles to put the right system in place. Tinkering with team culture thoughtlessly can be devastating. Thus it is vital that you involve the other members of setup in determining the problems, and removing them.

Problems may also occur when captains and coaches have certain expectations of some players while giving less weight-age to the others. Nobody performs poorly because they don’t try but they need to be guided and groomed. You need to be vigilant in guarding against communicating low expectations to your players based on cultural differences. It is a very subtle, but powerful and destructive form of discrimination and must be avoided at all cost.