Chapter 2 Learning to Lead Seeing the Cloud Through Our Windows
I am obsessed with cricket. No matter where I am, this beautiful game is always in the back of my mind. The joy, the memories, the drama, the complexities, and the ups and downs—the infinite possibilities.
For those of you unfamiliar with cricket, it is an international sport played on a large green oval in the summer and early fall. Its popularity is strongest among the current and former nations of the British Commonwealth. Like baseball, in cricket a ball is hurled at a batter who endeavors to strike the ball and score as many runs as possible. The pitcher is a bowler, the batter is a batsman, the diamond is a wicket, and the fielders try to get the batsman out. Yes, there are forms of a match that can stretch on for days, but then in baseball teams compete to win 3-, 5-, and even 7-game series. Both sports are endlessly complex, but suffice it to say that the team with the most runs wins. This is not the book to describe the ins and outs of cricket, but it is a book that cannot avoid the metaphor of cricket and business.
Like most South Asians, I somehow fell in love with this most English of games on the dusty matting wickets of the Deccan Plateau in southern India.
There, on those fields, I learned a lot about myself—succeeding and failing as a bowler, a batsman, and a fielder. Even today I catch myself reflecting on the nuances within the cricket rulebook and the inherent grace of a team of eleven working together as one unit.
During the early years of my life when my father’s work as a civil servant took us to the district headquarters of Andhra Pradesh and the hills of Mussoorie in what is now Uttarakhand, cricket was not the phenomenon it is now. Today the Indian Premier League sells its ten-year television rights for billions. But back then it became a phenomenon for me, when at the age of eight, we moved to Hyderabad. We stayed in a rented house in the Somajiguda neighborhood, and our landlord, Mr. Ali, was a gracious and proud Hyderabadi, who wore his Osmania University cricket cap while working in his auto shop. He was full of stories about all the great Hyderabadi cricketers of the 1960s. He once took me to watch a first-class match between Hyderabad and Bombay (today’s Mumbai). It was my first time in the great cricket stadium Fateh Maidan. I was completely smitten that day with all the glamour of cricket. The athletes, M. L. Jaisimha, Abbas Ali Baig, Abid Ali, and Mumtaz Hussain, became my heroes. The Bombay side had Sunil Gavasker and Ashok Mankad, among many other stars. I don’t recall any of them making much of an impression, even though they beat Hyderabad handily. I was in awe of M. L. Jaisimha’s on-field presence—his fashionable upturned collar and distinctive gait. To this day I remember Mr. Ali’s descriptions of Mumtaz Hussain’s “mystery ball,” and watching Abid Ali charging down the wicket to a medium pacer.
Soon my dad was again transferred in his job, and I moved to attend school in Delhi. There I watched my first Test match at Feroz Shah Kotla. It was a match between India and England. Watching these two sides play left an indelible impression. I remember the English batsman Dennis Amiss and bowler John Lever combined to destroy India by an inning, leaving me distraught for weeks. Amiss hit a double hundred, and Lever, playing in his first Test match, bowled medium pace through that long afternoon, and the ball was swinging for him like I’d never seen before. Suddenly all the Indian players were back in the hut.
When I was ten I returned to Hyderabad, and for the next six years I truly and surely fell in love with cricket as a player for Hyderabad Public School (HPS). In fact, Mr. Jaisimha’s two children attended my school, and as a result we were surrounded by cricket glamour, tradition, and obsession. In those days, everyone was talking about the two India School players from HPS. One of them was Saad Bin Jung (who also happened to be the famous Indian cricket captain, Tiger Pataudi’s, nephew). Still in school, he went on to smash a hundred runs against a touring West Indian side while playing for South Zone, representing our region of southern India. I began playing on the B team and graduated to the senior team, which played in the A leagues of Hyderabad. We were the only school team to play in the A leagues as the other teams were sponsored by banks and miscellaneous companies. Ranji Trophy players would turn up in these league games, and all that intrigue made for intense competition.
What excited me then about cricket is what still excites me today, even living in a non-cricketing country (though, the United States over a hundred years ago did periodically host Australian and English sides). Cricket for me is like a wondrous Russian novel with plots and subplots played out over the course of multiple acts. In the end, one brilliant knock, or three deftly bowled balls, can change the complexion of a game.
There are three stories from my all-too-brief cricketing past that speak very directly to business and leadership principles I use even today as a CEO.
The first principle is to compete vigorously and with passion in the face of uncertainty and intimidation. In my school cricketing days, we played a team one summer that had several Australian players. During the match, our PE teacher, who acted as a sort of general manager for the team, noticed that we were admiring the Aussies’ play. In fact, we were more than a little intimidated by them. We had never played against foreign players, and Australia of course loomed large in the national cricket psyche. I now recognize our teacher and general manager as very much like an American football coach—loud and very competitive. He was having none of our admiration and intimidation. He began by yelling at the captain to get more aggressive. I was a bowler and a terrible fielder but he positioned me at forward short leg, right beside the powerful Australian batsmen. I would have been happy standing far away, but he put me right next to the action. In time, with new energy and new focus, we transformed into a competitive team. It showed me that you must always have respect for your competitor, but don’t be in awe. Go and compete.
On reflection, a second principle is simply the importance of putting your team first, ahead of your personal statistics and recognition. One of my teams had a brilliant fast bowler. He was one of the most promising young cricketers in the land. He became even greater after attending a U-19 South Zone coaching clinic. His pace and accuracy were just brilliant. As a tail-end batsman myself, being in the nets (similar to baseball batting cages) against this guy was tough. But he had a self-destructive mindset. During one game our captain decided to replace him with another bowler. Soon, the new bowler coaxed the opposing batsman to mis-hit a ball skyward, an easy catch for our cantankerous teammate now at mid-off, a fielding position twenty-five to thirty yards from the batsman. Rather than take a simple catch, he plunged both hands deep into his pockets and watched passively as the ball fell right in front of him. He was a star player, and we looked on in complete disbelief. The lesson? One brilliant character who does not put team first can destroy the entire team.
There are of course many lessons and principles one can take from cricket, but for me a third is the central importance of leadership. Looking back, I remember one particular match in which my off-spin bowling was getting hammered by the opponents. I was serving up very ordinary stuff. Our team captain in retrospect showed me what real leadership looks like. When my over had ended (that is, when I had thrown six balls), he replaced me with himself even though he was a better batsman than bowler. He quickly took the wicket—the batsman was out. Customarily taking a wicket that efficiently would argue for him remaining in as a bowler. But instead, he immediately handed the ball back to me and I took seven wickets of my own. Why did he do it? I surmised he wanted me to get my confidence back. It was early in the season and he needed me to be effective all year. He was an empathetic leader, and he knew that if I lost my confidence it would be hard to get it back. That is what leadership is about. It’s about bringing out the best in everyone. It was a subtle, important leadership lesson about when to intervene and when to build the confidence of an individual and a team. I think that is perhaps the number one thing that leaders have to do: to bolster the confidence of the people you’re leading. That team captain went on to play many years of prestigious Ranji Trophy competition, and he taught me a very valuable lesson.
Those early lessons from cricket shaped my leadership style, as have my experiences as a husband, a father, a young Microsoft engineer thrilled to be part of our company’s visionary ascent, and later as an executive charged with building new businesses. My approach has never been to conduct business as usual. Instead it’s