Poor team effort can cost sports stars dearly

No matter the individual’s sporting brilliance, it can count for nothing when that shining talent is transferred into the uncharted waters of a team environment.

Examine the case of AB de Villiers in his return to international cricket in the third T20 of the series against Sri Lankans.

Not even a rapid-fire 63 off 44 balls at Newlands from the man roundly acknowledged as one of the world’s premier batsmen was enough to ensure victory as some spectacularly shoddy fielding let the South Africans down and gifted the tourists a 2-1 win in the three-match rubber.

In the wider spectrum of sport, losing a T20 series might not go down as the momentous a clamour of the Titanic colliding with an iceberg, but it certainly spoilt AB’s party.

An even more glaring fumble came from the Jamaican 4x100m relay team, who have been stripped of their 2008 Beijing Olympic gold medal after retrospective dope-testing revealed a positive result for Nesta Carter, effectively eclipsing one leg of Usain Bolt’s 100m, 200m and relay triple-triple of sprint titles from the Beijing, London and Rio Games.

Carter, who ran the first leg of the race, tested positive for the banned stimulant with the near unpronounceable tag methylhexaneamine – once used in nasal decongestants but now more commonly found in dietary supplements, was undone by science and dropped the baton in the most low-rent of fashions.

Bolt, unquestionably one of history’s great sprinters and one of the foremost advocates for drug-free athletics, was undone by circumstances not of his own making, his perfect record besmirched by a team-mate.

The group loyalty which keeps a team concentrated on the greater cause, literally fell apart and cost Bolt and Jamaica dearly.

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