The Sportsman Spirit
Sports! A lot has been said about playing them in the right spirit at all times. There are tons of lessons one could learn and adopt into one’s regular life, work culture & leadership as well.
Let me start off with this famous quote which am sure many of you might have heard over the years.
To be honest, at first when I heard of it I thought it was pretty lame of someone to come out and say something like that and more so about a game that’s always held in such high stead, touted as the game of the super-rich that exudes class right from the way they swing to tapping the ball into the hole, their attire, demeanor, behavior with their peers, all of it. Forget about going to an actual 9-hole golf course and swinging a club at one of those rough & patchy surfaced rock-hard golf balls and playing the game actively, this quote would equally apply and hold good to anyone watching the game on their TV sets as well, doesn’t matter whether it is the PGA, US Open (Golf).
If in case you could correlate to whatever has been said above, you know what it all boils down to. And that is undoubtedly “the spirit that the game has to be played in”.
An Uphill Climb!
For anyone watching any kind of sports today or having played them at some level over their past will be able correlate to this instantly. Think of a situation when the chips are totally down and when you’re facing a daunting situation over what’s required of you, going onto the field again post a short break. A greater portion of the team inclusive of the support staff might have already lost the game in their heads and might know for a fact that a comeback from here is looking quite impossible. And, everybody in the team also understands the situation as that might not be the first game they have played in their tenure and they have a grasp of facts as they witnessed it right there, being on the receiving end of a hailstorm.
Now, as a coach / a manager / a leader / a captain the things you tell your players / team members over that short window of time, that small opportunity you get to communicate and get them into a fit frame of mind to not just go in there and face the challenge on the surface but to go and fight for a cause, does matter a lot and that could also go a long way in defining what might transform into the culture the team would follow in the long run.
And, that may vary from a simple:
“hustle up guys, the game ain’t over yet”
or
“just go and give ‘em hell”
Does the number – “434” ring a bell?
Well. If you follow / have been following the game of cricket it ought to be no surprise really.
This easily goes down as one of the best run chases you’d see in the history of the game for the sheer audacity of how the Aussies had scored 434 and were all smiles about it in the dressing room going into the innings break.
South Africa needing 435 were totally written off at that point in time. Not a single soul who followed the game over whatever channel, wherever he / she was in the world would have had the foggiest idea of what was slated to come in next.
I was watching an interview of Herschelle Gibbs reminiscing about that very match when he was asked about the feat. He quoted a few things his then teammate Jacques Kallis said as they walked into the dressing room and some thoughts collectively coming in from the other team members as well: -
“They scored some 25-30 runs short of where they could have been”
“We need a great opening partnership”
“We need one guy to stick at the crease when the other guy goes after the bowling and still never lose sight of the required rate keeping pace with it always”
“If we get to a score of what is like 200 runs after 20 overs, then we have more than a chance here given the wanderers pitch that never ceases to die”
“Nonetheless, we have to be able to score 1 boundary every over (which again takes a leap out of what Sachin Tendulkar said once chasing another mammoth score – “boundary an over = 200 runs spanning 50 overs (50 x 4); and in the other 250 (50 x 5) balls we’d need some 150 runs at a run rate of 3.0 runs per over, so that ought to be very possible”)”
Also, reading a few excerpts from articles written about that unforgettable day from varied sources online and watching some videos on how the Proteas conquered a mountain of a challenge has a lot of learnings over many aspects.
And not to mention that these mental models, skills on how to stay calm, chart out a plan and an approach to handle those tricky & daunting situations could hold good anywhere and could as well be an integral part of anybody’s day-to-day workflow, work structure representing varied sort of challenges faced across Management, IT & Product teams grossly.
Observation - The best way to learn
It’s not necessary that one learns only by experiencing stuff that happens to oneself. There are thousands of situations that have happened around us that we have witnessed over the years, read about / watched those historically significant events somewhere over a documentary from yesteryears either in the form of still pictures / video. What’s important is the learning bit and learning how we’d accommodate and apply them into our lives thus alleviate a few pain areas that we ourselves have taken notice of / have been informed about.
Here are some select few learnings extracted over that very match.
1. Attitude is everything
Taking nothing away from the Aussies here, it was them who laid the platform for what transformed into a magnificent challenge and that wasn’t in any way to be rubbished aside just because they ended up on the losing side of the game. Be it this game or the world cup finals in 2003 against India, their strategy going into bat is almost always to decimate the opposition by scoring heavily and putting up a pile of runs. Also, the same goes for the South African team who then chased that total down. In any situation, esp. the daunting ones attitude becomes very crucial.
For something like that to be pulled off, every team member should have absolutely impeccable clarity of the desired outcomes and also in putting the required quantum of effort apportioning it over their individual strengths to align with and achieve those outcomes. Everyone ought to button down and do whatever is supposed to be done when one is handed one’s share of control. It is not enough for one person or the leader to carry the “impossible is nothing”, “don’t stop at anything” personality traits. Those ought to be the very definition projected over each and every team member’s attitude.
2. Mental toughness - a shield from getting bogged down
The very fact that something of that magnitude was achieved by both sides itself speaks volumes about the individual efforts put in. And, for each and everyone to get to that state of consistency and deliver over a period of 8 hours in a game required all of them in the team including the support staff, managers, coaches to beat the conventional thinking and rise above it. The only way that could have been achieved is by upholding a strong belief which is a result of the mental toughness put to practice regularly over the years.
The true test of any team would be when they have their backs to the wall and the chips are down over something that grossly represents an expectation when the reality is nothing is stacked in their favor. With a high level of mental toughness powered and backed by an attitude to get things done, one doesn’t really worry much about how big a mountain it is to climb or how daunting the whole task feels and starts to think about various ways to approach the problem by perhaps breaking it down into miniature tasks putting one on the path to that much coveted success.
3. Turning unfavorable conditions to favorable ones
There is no way that the Proteas would have perceived this task to be a favorable one. Okay, they have had a history of consistently scoring above the Average Run Rate as opposed to the other teams in any tournament as they were always known to have a great line-up of players from many years prior to this instance. But, this was truly humungous a task, nobody had ever done before and possibly nobody would ever come close to doing for many years later too.
Not always is every situation favorable to anyone stepping in. In fact, most of the times the situation is really the opposite to how one would want it to be. But, staring in the direction of the required task and pondering pensively over the magnitude of the height, length & breadth of it is only going to make it more tiring and induce negativity enforcing you to make errors you wouldn’t have even dreamed of. It is never going to bring about that positivity that is required there to say in the least. The positivity would rather come when you drop all your fears, do away with all your doubts. The only way to do that is to bring about a change in the approach, break it down into its elements, try to turn those unfavorable situations into feasible ones to start with (if you cannot turn it into favorable ones directly that is).
4. Planning - is the crucial bit
Going in to bat at the start of the second innings of the game solely entrusting it all to the players in the top & middle order sans a proper game plan might have led to things being totally different from how it turned out in the end for the South Africans. Those words uttered by Kallis, one of the senior members of the team during the break when they had gathered as depicted in the section above seems to have taken proper effect in shaping, sharpening and supporting the mental mold that was required to pull off this amazing feat thus setting an example for all the others.
Making plans is never going to go in as time wasted because of the fact that it is the only way to really put those ambitions into perspective and split them over to ascertain how one is going to back one’s mental toughness & positive attitude. Plans have to be made not only to align team members over outcomes required but in essence to also to have a yardstick of measurement which dynamically gets updated on the fly helping gauge where one stands now as opposed to where one ought to be after some (x) quantum of time gets elapsed. And not only that, it also ought to help in altering the course / direction helping make that shift to Plan-B midway and quickly when one realizes that the situation itself has changed now as opposed to where it was when it all started which demands changes in the plan as well.
5. Teamwork & Execution takes it a full circle
If you look at the batting scorecard closely you’d see that the win wasn’t in anyway convincing at all. The game went almost up to the last ball of the second innings, 49.5 overs it took for the match to be sealed. After Gibbs got that mammoth score and losing the other stalwarts like Kallis, ABD & Kemp cheaply to minions of scores the onus shifted to the lower middle order and it was Boucher & van der Wath to take them over to the next silo and get them a bit more closer to that elusive victory.
Teamwork and Execution ought to go hand in hand. The reason behind that is the fact that it is always a collective effort of the entire team that gets one to achieving things that are extraordinary and magnificent. It never is and never should be a one man show. There can and will always be that one / few set of individuals who shine brighter than 100 suns at times but without the others chipping in with their individual efforts one could still be left lurking in the dark. You ought to live and execute as a team with all your individual abilities coming together for a cause.
6. Individual Ownership & Accountability - the base of it all
It would be very easy to go over that scorecard again and take quick notice of Gibbs innings, an individual score of 175 and write it off as the innings of the whole match. But, that’s just one side of the coin so to speak. Moreover, for people who come from that train of thought 435 – 175 = 260. The team still needed to fill in 260 runs to the total before they’d be declared victors. It is good that one guy named Gibbs took charge and the others quite rightly played around him to get the team across the line. For that to happen at each and every instance of the match the striker facing the bowling would have had to deal with the situation with laser sharp focus and in taking it all on himself with a unilateral sense of ownership and being undivided over his personal accountability.
Teamwork and execution would end up meaning nothing if the individuals in the team don’t have a sense ownership, purpose and accountability built / defined by their individual roles and responsibilities sorted over their respective strengths and weaknesses. One could hire the best man for each job and set the team alignment but nothing would move even by an inch without those individuals stepping up to the task on hand and taking responsibility and delivering their quantum of work to the best of their abilities.
7. Leadership - to lead from the front
Graeme Smith was the captain of the side in this match and an opening batsman. He played a blinder of an innings that day scoring 90 (missed the 3-figure mark by a 10-run margin) at a strike rate that’s better than that of Gibbs. But, here’s the irony. A very select few remember that captain’s knock in spite of contributing to a prolific winning cause. That right there, more or less is what sums up leadership in real life for you. You are very well are aware of how your personal success might get completely overshadowed but still you swallow the bullet, take one for the team, go in and perform like there’s no tomorrow and take no offense at all because at the end of it you have intern contributed to the whole team’s win so you now have all the more reason to take a lot of pride in and celebrate. You simply take it all in your stride and move onto the next challenge.
NOTE: I had to put that banner in there as I feel it deserved the same aura as much as Gibbs’ innings if not more. Losing another wicket there at that stage after they lost Boeta Dippenaar early may have spelt their doom for sure. But, it was Smith who held it together and God alone knows those conversations that took place between him and Gibbs to architect that partnership and essay a masterclass of an innings knocking off 189 runs in double quick time atop the order.
Quite often leadership is a term that gets thrown around in teams and has also led to the perception that leadership largely is about doing nothing really but taking sedentary positions at office and passing orders left and right. Well, if anything in reality, leadership is an ownership & accountability of everything under the hood including the outcomes of those team member’s work who have hit beyond their targets, have hit targets exactly, haven’t hit any targets, haven’t budged from where they were in the previous silo. The challenges of a manager are aplenty inclusive of giving individual instructions to his team members from the side lines when he has a clear vision of who has to do what but the person on the field for some reason isn’t doing it right. It is not only about only setting expectations but might also involve giving detailed instructions / orders whilst constantly measuring current positions, continuously forecasting whether the current state (inclusive of speed) is good to be carried ahead or to whether the induction of a few critical changes seem necessary. Leadership doesn’t stop at delivering one’s share of work with an impeccable spirit but also to ensure that the same spirit is carried over to all the other team members top-down, leading to the consistent motivation all through.
Conclusion
To conclude am just going to say:
Because, that’s one crucial rule every sportsman lives by, as long as he plays / is associated with the game in any way. And, I don’t see any reason why we can’t incorporate the same thinking into our teams and culture at our workplaces.
References:
5th ODI, Johannesburg, March 12, 2006