How Indian Cricket Can Learn From Wayne Rooney’s Man Utd Exit

Rooney wasn’t given a longer rope by Manchester United despite being a legend. Can Indian cricket learn something?

The word legend is often overused in sport. But Wayne Rooney is certainly a Manchester United legend. He's the club's all time record goal-scorer with 253 strikes in all competitions. So it's quite surprising, that aged just 31, he left to re-sign for Everton.

He would have been fully aware that his Old Trafford career was coming to an end, having not played much at all last season under new manager Jose Mourinho. In fact Rooney said he didn't feel he deserved a League Cup or Europa League medal, because he played little part in either campaign.

This is the cut throat nature of football, and particularly the Premier League. And it's very different to the way the Indian cricket team deals with big players.

In football, there's certainly no room for sentiment, clearly in Indian cricket, there is.

Take Harbhajan Singh for instance. He'll go down as a legend of Indian cricket. He's a World Cup winner, a World T20 champion, the first Indian ever to take a Test hat-trick, and he's been a part of numerous successful Indian sides over the years.

But he was clearly on the decline several years ago and found himself on the sidelines. With the rise of Ravichandran Ashwin and others, Harbhajan should have probably played his last Test match in 2012.

Harbhajan was however, recalled to the side several times, and played his last Test in 2015. He played his last game for India in a T20 international against the UAE in 2016. But for the last three or four years of his career, he looked a world apart from the matchwinner that India once loved.

His story was like a Bollywood film, in which the heroine continues to chase the hero despite being knocked back for years, and despite it being clear that the hero will never be able to give her what she wants. Only with Bhajji, unlike a Bollywood film, there was no happy ending.

And it's turning out exactly like that for Yuvraj Singh. His story is awe inspiring. To come back from battling cancer to the international cricket circuit is an achievement in itself. But did he really merit a recall to the India side? Should he be anywhere near the ODI squad these days?

His Champions Trophy campaign was not great. We saw some flashes of brilliance, but 105 runs from 4 innings isn't what the Indian fans would expect from their number 4. There's also the question of what this is doing for the careers of young, up and coming players.

Rishabh Pant could have quite easily been included in the Champions Trophy squad, giving him that first big tournament experience. Now, he won’t play in an ICC event for at least two years.

You could even make an argument for Sachin Tendulkar – but let's not go there. He's one of the few sportsmen ever who probably earned the right to do whatever he wanted in his latter years. And he did score 74 in his last Test innings, in which India wrapped up a series win over the West Indies.

The reason behind sentiment in Indian cricket clearly has a lot to do with culture. Wayne Rooney, in the eyes on Manchester United, wasn't good enough to warrant a starting place there anymore.

Everton, his boyhood club, are confident he can 'do a job' for them and that's why they've taken a chance on him. But mark my words, if Rooney has a bad season, he's sure to find himself at another club the following year. Maybe he'll go and have a huge pay day in China, where he can help publicise the sport.

European football is all about form. If you’re as good and as loyal as Francesco Totti, you’ll survive. He almost led his Roma side to the Serie A title in his 25th season there, at the age of 40.

If you're out of form like Wayne Rooney, then no amount of sentiment will save you. Perhaps Indian cricket would be stronger if it adopted a similar approach.

(Nikesh Rughani is a sports journalist based in UK.)

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