It all depends on the context of 'significant'. Fiten put it better than I ever have earlier in the thread, my view is it has almost nothing to do with winning.
I'll leave Dustin alone, already run my mouth when I shouldn't have on here and done some damage, so I'll avoid anything further.
I actually think there's a lot of aspects of cricket that really accentuate the team aspect. You say most of the time only two players are involved but that's not the case. You can be the best bowler in the world but unless you have 10 team mates who are sharp in the field, stopping runs, taking catches, chasing, diving etc then you are not as effective. That requires hours and hours in the field, long periods of concentration, often in arduous conditions. Good players and good teams feed each other, keep up energy and encouragement, keep a spark in the game for sometime 10 or 12 hours in the field over a couple of days.
Many of those fielding also have absolutely no role to play in the game until they bat again. That demands a lot of team first attitude, to keep yourself in the game when you are out of it.
Batting is essentially an individual game in a team sport but even with that batsman work with other players to build partnerships and to stay sharp over long periods of time. They work with the tail end batsman to build partnerships. The communication is must less and mostly out of play but the importance of focus is also absolute, any mistake is usually fatal.
Interestingly over my 10 years or so in footy the game actually moved more towards cricket's approach in terms of the high performance environment stuff. The we're tough, these blokes are weak stuff pre game is essentially gone, self motivation is more in vogue and coach's addresses tend to be more technical than passionate. I think both games will end up on a similar path.
