Thoughts from India-England Match!!

There are two ways of losing a game or even a case/project in corporate life. One is by a close margin where both sides give a thorough fight, and the other way was witnessed yesterday after the India-England Match, where the nature of defeat that the English handed over stuck strongly in my mind, and compelled me to, during a flight from Ahmedabad to Delhi, think about what life lessons and learnings we can derive for corporate life and thought of putting forth the same.

1.???Leadership is critical – If the leader himself does not set the right example by performing or getting into the groove of the matter and taking full responsibility for implementation of the mandate, the team can’t be expected to deliver results. A leader cannot just delegate the work and expect the team to get results without demonstrating the intent from the get-go. Rohit just looked expressionless, physically unfit, and him not having the right, and positive mindset was evident from his expressions and batting approach throughout the series.

2.???Fire and Hunger are crucial - Perseverance and consistent focus are absolute essential ingredients for obtaining the desired result. Howsoever skillful or talented a person may be is of no value till he has the consistent fire and hunger to move on and perform the same operation time after time after time. Being intelligent is mostly God-gifted, but unless one burns the midnight oil every single day to keep his skills sharpened and finely updated in real-time, it would be wrong to expect desired outcomes. Rohit, KL, among most of the other team members, just didn’t demonstrate that fundamental and inherent fire which was evident by the way they kept on getting out on short balls or by nicking the ball to the keeper or getting the inside edge every time on the same very mistakes. They just didn’t introspect on what was going on and properly improvise on areas of concern at all, and kept on tirelessly making the same mistakes. It was just so tiring to see it so evidently every single time!!

3.???Attitude and Mindset are key - The way Bhuvneshwar Kumar bowled the first over was just a transparent show of how the team was thinking from the get-go. Most of the balls were well outside the off-stump, indicating clearly that the intent was to save runs instead of taking wickets. One can just never take wickets with those kinds of balls. Sooner Butler came to a few steps ahead on the very first ball, they brought the keeper close to the stumps (to a fast bowler, can we imagine the confidence level that Kumar would have had!!) and then made him go back again the next ball. The crucial lesson is that even if the attitude is defensive and one is nervous, the heart and mindset should be kept extremely strong, and the colleague should ensure that the focus is not lost and he keeps his calm to implement his plan thoroughly, come what may. Everyone gets nervous during court arguments or while speaking at a session, or handling a key client account, but maintaining the right mindset and focus to abide by the decided plan can always help overcome such initial hitches. There would always be opposite sides and teams/colleagues in professional life that would try to dominate and be aggressive but if one maintains his temperament and implements the plan to the Tee, said plan may or may not work out, but it surely wont work if the colleague buckles down under pressure and changes his complete approach to the end objective. Keep your heart strong!! Bhuvneshwar should have bowled on the wickets/feet/yorkers every single ball as Arshdeep did in that one over that he got, even if it goes for runs.

4.???“What if ‘negative situation’”, will result in said negative situation: Thought process of a team member governs his/her efforts towards a given mandate. Thinking along the lines of what if something negative/inadvertent happens is likely to result in that negative result. The frame of mind, therefore, plays a key role in the engagement and conduct of an entrepreneur towards a project, and keeping such a frame of mind positive is always likely to yield the desired results irrespective of the situations around and the circumstances in which the project is to be executed. Playing slow in the initial overs under the mindset of ‘what if we lose too many wickets’ is bound to result in a slow start, and may further result in loss of the wickets as each player would try to play their unnatural game to protect his wickets which would eventually result in making an inadvertent error.

5.???Be natural and don’t change yourself following competition/others – Following from the above point, the moment one decides to change his personality/behavior merely because a competitor/someone in the network follows a certain practice, unless such change comes naturally, it is bound to be injurious. One must be natural and do what his mind/training does freely to expect the right results to fall in place. While we all appreciate that the intent was to save wickets in the beginning, but it’s a 20-20 game and India bats deep, and it was critical that the openers backed themselves to play their natural game and not 30-something after 6 overs, which just shows the absolute defensive mindset and lack of confidence that is completely contrary to the thinking required in a 20-20 format, moreover, when we are not even able to continue being on the crease after a slow start and got out at regular intervals. Perhaps it’s better to send guys like Axar and Pant to open and give a quick start, and it’s just fine even if it’s 40-2 after 4 overs!!

PS: This is purely one’s brief perspective here, outlined in a one-hour flight.