Learnings in the loss

Success and failure in life continue to provide valuable leadership lessons, and sports is no exception. The recently concluded Test series between India and New Zealand was a shocker. We lost a home series for the first time since 2011-12, breaking a streak of eighteen consecutive series wins on home soil. Any loss stings, and in this cricket-crazy country, a defeat in cricket becomes a highly emotional issue—especially when it’s a complete and embarrassing washout, as was the case in this three-match series against New Zealand. What made it worse was that the Indians were outplayed in all departments by New Zealand and are now left with nowhere to hide.

Every Test-playing nation prepares pitches to align with its strengths. When Indian teams play abroad, they confront conditions that favour swing bowling or fast, bouncy tracks. Rightfully, India prepares pitches that offer substantial turn for spinners. For the past twelve years, superior Indian spinners have consistently decimated visiting teams’ batting lineups, spinning a web that has trapped opposing batsmen. However, Test cricket today is no child’s play; it is a highly competitive and professional sport where technology is used to analyse opponents’ strengths and weaknesses, helping teams design effective winning strategies. In this contest of leadership, New Zealand showed superior strategy and successfully implemented it. India's strategy, on the other hand, backfired, and we were subjected to the unedifying sight of average New Zealand spinners rocking the Indian boat. Astonishingly, bowlers like Santner and Ajaz Patel appeared unplayable, while India's proven spinners, Ashwin and Jadeja, were made to look unexpectedly ordinary.

When I was a child, my father was posted in Nainital, where we had a kitchen garden that was regularly destroyed by visiting wild animals, especially a notorious porcupine. The gardener decided to tackle the problem head-on and dug a huge pit and camouflaged it with branches and other plant material. The next day, the garden was devastated by porcupines and other animals, but to add to our woes, the gardener's wife was wailing after he fell into the pit he had dug and hurt himself. Similarly, the Indian team fell into their own trap. The important leadership lesson here is that if you have a strategy, you must meticulously plan its execution. A strategy becomes meaningless if leaders fail to anticipate competitors’ responses and prepare their team accordingly. We prepared turning tracks to ensnare the visiting team but had no answers for the opposing spinners. Our batsmen appeared even less prepared to handle spin than New Zealand’s, looking clueless against ordinary spin bowling.

The lesson is that you must assess your strengths and weaknesses and train your team members to overcome their limitations. You cannot simply leave everything to chance. Additionally, digging a pit for others is a negative approach; leaders should focus on the positives.

Ever since the defeat, the IPL has become the villain of the piece. Most critics of the Indian batting display are pointing an accusing finger at the IPL. The refrain is that the IPL, with its T-20 template of slam-bang cricket, has converted batsmen into "sloggers" and bowlers into those focusing only on containment. There is some truth in this, but we must not overlook the tremendous contribution of the IPL to the development of Indian cricketers. Most young men can now adopt the IPL route to showcase their talents, and the money they earn offers enough promise of financial security, making more and more young boys take to cricket as a career.

However, Test cricket is a different ball game altogether. The solution lies in having horses for courses—different teams for Test cricket and T-20. To a large extent, this has already started happening in India. What is required is that those who are going to play Test cricket should be given as many opportunities as possible to practice red-ball cricket by participating in domestic tournaments and India "A" ventures. It is strange that we prepare vicious turners for Test matches, yet our own batsmen rarely get to practice on such wickets. No wonder, when the occasion comes, they are found severely wanting. The wickets in domestic cricket are batting paradises, and many young batsmen put up stellar performances. This puts them into the Test team, where they find themselves out of sorts when the ball starts turning square. The recent pathetic batting display was exhibited both by senior established batsmen and aspiring young players. The question that intrigues us is: why prepare a minefield of a wicket if your batsmen lack the skill set to perform on them? This is perhaps a very important lesson in strategy and leadership. Look first at your strengths and then focus on strategies that will build on them.

I find newspapers lamenting the rather ordinary batting averages at home of some of the accomplished batsmen like Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli. The same was the case with Cheteshwar Pujara and Ajinkya Rahane. By preparing rank turners, we have managed to successfully ruin the averages of these great batsmen and also undermined their self-confidence. That the performance has been wanting cannot be denied, as the figures speak for themselves. Does it mean that the time has come to phase out the senior players? In sports, as in any other organisation, one must retire even tested performers after they reach a certain age and keep infusing young blood into the organisation. However, this should not be done in a knee-jerk fashion. This process of creative destruction needs to be managed with maturity and foresight, requiring proactive leadership. Succession planning is one of the most important tasks of the leadership team in any organisation but should never be done in an impulsive and haphazard manner. It is a continuous process that should involve a hassle-free handing over of the baton from the old to the new, passing on the gems of experience and building the capacity of new members so that they can carry the team to the finishing line ahead of others without any hiccups.

The biggest leadership lesson is that failures lead to growth, and this is how we must view the recent debacle. We must learn from it by returning to the drawing board and planning for the future in an open and uncluttered manner. Like the phoenix, we can rise from the ashes. There is no better example of this than the performance of our own Indian team in Australia in 2021-22 under Ajinkya Rahane. We lost the first Test badly and faced the humiliation of being bundled out for 36. Virat Kohli, the captain, had to return after the first Test due to personal reasons. The odds were heavily against us, yet the Indian team under Rahane and Shastri fought back, with Rahane leading by example with a superb hundred. India lost several other players, like Bumrah, to injury, yet defeated Australia 2-1 in the series. This is possibly one of the most underrated success stories in Indian cricket. In a similar manner, Pakistan was recently hammered by England in the first Test. They carried out major changes in their team and relied on the strategy of fielding untested spin bowlers against England. Before England could realise what hit them, they had lost the series.

India need not despair. The failure has only highlighted the problem areas that the leadership must address positively. Self-belief must be restored, and a new team combination with the right mix of experience and youth created. The Australian series can bring India back into the limelight. All it requires is faith in oneself, fierce determination, and the will to win. We may have suffered a defeat, but we must believe that we have not been defeated.

The writer is an ex-Chief Secretary, Govt of Uttar Pradesh. Views expressed are personal