Happy Ugadi to my blog readers!! Ugadi symbolizes the start of a new year in Telugu calender and will be celebrated grandly by every Telugu family all over the globe. But this time the celebrations started precociously on 2nd of April when Men in Blue crushed Lankans to grab the ICC Cricket World Cup 2011. April 2nd marked the beginning of new era in Indian cricket.
Again, whole India was united in celebrations. 12.1 billion people forgot all their worries, insecurities, differences and shared the joy with each other. The sense of Indian was all over and national integrity was at its peak.
Enough of celebrations!! Every story has a moral. This victory song of the Indian cricket team has many morals. Many of my blog readers are engineering students gearing up for careers in software industry. Corporate culture has a lot to do with team management. We can learn a lot about team leading and working skills from this Indian team. Lets make an attempt to do the same.
Moral 1. Every Team Member will have a responsibility. Don't try too hard. Just fulfil your responsibility. Look at our team, Sehwag's responsibility was to give team a flying start and Tendulkar's role was to anchor the innings. Zak was asked to pick up a wicket when ever a partnership is building. Munaf is just his supporter. Yuvi was asked to step up as all-rounder. Raina is the man who has to stand the death over pressure and score valuable 20s and 30s. Ghambhir is asked to build up a partnership with Tendulkar after Sehwag gets dismissed. Kohli was asked to strengthen the middle order. Everyone did their job and that's crucial.
Moral 2. When someone in team fails, stop abusing him and try to make up the loss. Everyone fails some or the other day. If we consider our team, there are many failure stories. Yusuf, Piyush and Sreesanth never performed in this world cup. Munaf and Nehra also struggled initially. Dhoni found it difficult to score a double digit score. Harbhajan never played to his full potential. But we always had a backup. Zak, Yuvi and Ashwin masked bowling weaknesses. Raina covered up lower order failures. Viru, Tendya, Gauti and Kohli made our batting look invincible. On the big day their most powerful weapons, Viru and Tendya, failed to fire and we saw Captain Dhoni and Gauti stepping up to the cause and playing match winning innings.
Moral 3. Believe your team-mates. They are worth it. Don't doubt their potentials. Our players believed each other and gelled up quite well. Consider Yuvi. Everyone criticised his selection. Even Yuvi was in a very poor form and was not 100% fit. But the captain and his team believed Yuvi. Sachin inspired him to the core and brought out the match-winner in him. He was judged as man of the series. When many players like Munaf, Bhajji, Raina, Nehra, Yusuf etc were struggling in form, the team backed them up. Our team believed each other very well and played as a unit.
Moral 4. Don't yield to pressure. Do trust your team and its performance. Contribute individually to team's success. When our team tied its game with the English and lost to proteas very few had confidence on this team's winning chances. But the team never lost confidence on itself. All players understood that the team itself is important than individuals and contributed to the team glory. The players believed all the time that they as a team can win this cup. That's the spirit of a team.
Moral 5. Strategical mistakes do happen. Few wrong decisions might have been taken. We cant change it. But we can always try to minimise the damage. In semis against Pak, MS Dhoni wrongly read the pitch and took Nehra in place of Ashwin. They didn't curse themselves for doing it. Its a part and parcel of game. Mistakes do happen. Nehra stood up to the occasion and bowled brilliantly to be the best bowler of Indian side in that match. Chawla inclusion in squad was also a mistake but Yuvi covered it up. When your team has taken a wrong decision, step up and play hero to mitigate the loss. Its easy to curse but difficult to perform.
Moral 6. Learn from your team-mates. Its a very good habit. Teach your strengths to your teamster and correct your mistakes from them. Indian fielding was very poor during the initial games. But once Raina made it into the squad the whole fielding standards rose. Kohli brought out his best and Yuvi went back to his original backward point. Yuvi, Raina and Kohli formed an impregnable covers. Looking at them even less athletic men started to dive on the field. Observe how a 38 year old Tendulkar dived at the boundaries to stop runs.
Moral 7. Appreciate your teamster performances. Celebrate individual milestones as team milestones. This team is best at this. They all applauded each other contributions. They all celebrated each other milestones. Importantly they all played for each other and celebrated with each other. If any player performed well, Tendulkar never hesitated to praise him even though he is his utmost junior.
These are few morals I could learn from our team on their campaign for glory. If you found anything more please do share them with our blog readers by commenting this post with it.
Good luck....
