"So that is the news from Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking and all the children are above-average."
Every week, Garrison Keillor concludes Prairie Home Companion with these wise words. Similarly, every week, the titans of the corporate world conclude that that they will compete for the future by winning the war-for-talent. They all strive to hire above-average people, and instruct their human resources departments to design "people-models" that allows their company to hire talented employees, as talented as the children of Lake Wobegon.
However, for a practicing business executive, this war-for-talent is mostly irrelevant. Winning the war-for-talent takes too long to matter. I, and most of my peers, have windows of about three years to deliver on our objectives. Over that time frame, the talent we have to work with is usually a given.
Even at Talent Masters, companies supposedly flush with talent like Procter and Gamble or GE, it is rare to step into a role worth doing with a crack team already in place. Best case, one can parachute in a handful of exceptional individuals into key positions. From then on, business leadership is mostly about trying to get your team to punch above their weight, by giving them a sense of unity, direction and belief, and by tactically shaping the game to amplify strengths and cover weaknesses.
A cricket captain’s job is like that of a practicing business executive. As a captain, you can preach, or whinge, about how your cricket board should have invested in the grass-roots game years ago, bringing better players through to the professional level. True, but irrelevant. You’ve got a squad. Your job is to win with that squad, warts and all.
Looked at this way, a good captain is not necessarily one who wins big tournaments. A good captain is one who gets his team to punch above their weight, who wins games he had no right to win given the quality of his players. By this yardstick my all time favourite World Cup captain is not Clive Lloyd, not Steve Waugh, but Martin Crowe in the 1992 World Cup.Martin Crowe led a bunch of bits and pieces mediocrities, plus one quality player in Crowe himself. Yet, they competed on even terms with clearly superior teams by turning the prevailing cricketing wisdom upside down. Mark Greatbatch opened the batting, slugging the ball over the infield. Dipak Patel opened the bowling with his off-breaks. In the process, Crowe’s Kiwis changed the way 50 over cricket is played, forever.
Crowe’s team, which included dibbly-dobbly merchants like Gavin Larsen, Chris Harris and Willie Watson, were looking good for a spot in the World Cup final until an inspired Inzamam-ul-Haq blitzed Pakistan to a come from behind semi-final victory. Which goes to show that planning, spunk and tactical smarts can’t match god-given talent. However, in a contest between evenly matched teams, smart tactics should make all the difference.
Another brilliant tactician was Shane Warne. I've watched enviously as he conjured up victories out of nothing for Hampshire and Rajasthan Royals. Clearly the greatest captain Australia never had.
MS Dhoni has one of the best minds in contemporary cricket and can be genuinely inventive. One of my favourite passages of play in recent history was the Nagpur test against Australia in 2008, when Ishant and Zaheer dried up the flow of runs by bowling yorkers a foot outside the off stump, frustrating Australia into a epoch-ending series defeat. Another memorable Dhoni innovation was placing a fielder directly behind the bowler to catch-out a rampaging Keiron Pollard in an IPL final. I haven't worked out how the same cricketing mind bowls Ashish Nehra, or Joginder Sharma, in the last over.
I would love to see captains using more tactical inventiveness in this World Cup. Perhaps the ICC should institute a Spirit of Martin Crowe innovation award, along the lines of the ICC Spirit of Cricket or the Kingfisher fair play awards. If the ICC is not up to the task, this blog could fill the breach.
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