Finding a Gift for the Man Who Has Everything

I had the pleasure of meeting Satya Nadella on behalf of AdPushup and SaaSBoomi earlier this week—what an incredible person—even during a 40 minute meeting, it became clear why he is revered as one of the greatest minds in technology! His attention to detail, articulation of thought, and understanding of the cloud market is impeccable.

If you know anything about Satya, you’re probably aware that he's a huge cricket fan. His book, "Hit Refresh", is filled with asides and anecdotes about the game, and he played for his school team at Hyderabad Public School. However, this post is not about Satya, it is about M. L. Jaisimha, who Satya picked ahead of Sachin Tendulkar as his favorite Indian cricketer.

Perhaps the best captain never to have led India, Jaisimha was the captain of the Hyderabad team during his cricket career. The Indian team captain from the 60s and Jaisimha’s close friend, Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi, was happy to play under his leadership in domestic matches. Under his captaincy, the South Zone triumphed three times in the Duleep Trophy.

When Jaisimha didn't make it to the Indian team that went to Australia in 1967, it was considered a serious blunder by people who understood the game. But the selectors found a golden opportunity to make amends, when Bhagwat Chandrasekhar got injured on the tour. An SOS was sent for a replacement for the leg spinner. They ended up sending Jaisimha, who was primarily a batsman, by the first available flight. This also could happen only in Indian cricket. A specialist bowler being replaced by a specialist batsman!

Things didn't end there. Jet-lagged and with just a day at the nets, Jai was pitch-forked into the playing eleven in the crucial third Test at Brisbane. Batting with care, concentration, and character, Jai essayed two classic innings of 74 and 101. Not only that, he nearly pulled off an improbable victory for India. The team fell short by 40 agonizing runs. The Sydney Morning Herald reported, “Australia won, but it was Jaisimha, the 28-year-old lion of Hyderabad who was hailed as the conquering hero when the teams left the field. He arrived in Australia as a team reinforcement only a week ago, without the benefit of representative cricket for three months.”

Another lesser known fact, Jaisimha was the first batsmen to have batted all five days of a test match! Perhaps the greatest tribute to him was paid by Sunil Gavaskar, who named his son Rohan JaiVishwa–after three legends who had shared the cricket grounds with him, Rohan Kanhai, ML Jaisimha, and Gundappa Vishwanath.

A month ago, when Avinash Raghava, told me that a meeting was being setup, my team and I started thinking of what we could gift Satya—quite a difficult job to think of a gift for a person who runs a trillion-dollar company—but we eventually came down to this: What better gift to give our hero than a memorabilia connected to his hero?

During this time, I got in touch with the late cricketer’s family, who generously donated M.L. Jaisimha’s favorite shirt, preserved in mint condition, from over 3 decades ago, which we gifted to Satya on their behalf; To say the least, he was astonished and touched, probably reminding him of his childhood days growing up in Hyderabad with a poster of his hero on his wall.

His team later told me that the general protocol is that all gifts for him are sent separately by the Indian office to his US office - however Satya wanted to take this gift with him. A great tribute to a legendary hero.

Thank you Sangeeta Bavi & Avinash Raghava for inviting me. Cheers to fellow entrepreneurs Sparsh Gupta, Krishna Depura, Suresh Sambandam, Manav Garg, Prukalpa Sankar, Nishith Rastogi, Rajavel Subramanian, and Aneesh Reddy.