Sachin Vs Lara – Beyond Cricket

A Compilation of Thoughts

For Private Use Only – Strictly Confidential

Preface
Dear Member,

The following paper is a compilation of the discussion we had at Marina beach the
previous Sunday. I have made an attempt to provide the same as an with headings for
coherence. This paper is strictly meant for Private Use of the members only. This
paper is not an academic or research paper and hence you are advised not to quote
anything outside. The objective of the paper is to provide a summary of what has been
discussed. This means that the topic is still open for debate in the online forum.

The topic for the discussion was “Sachin Vs Lara”. Though the topic does not seem to
be intellectual, and seems to be something that has been discussed over for so many
years, the SIT sat down to think and understand the various possible connotations that
one could make out of the two personalities and a comparison between the two. The
objective of the discussion was not to conclude who is a better player, but what
possible threads can be pulled out and learnt from this topic. The objective was the
learning using the debate!

Date: 28/ 12/ 08

Venue: Gandhi Statue, Marina Beach, Chennai

Participants

1. Srinath Varadarajan
2. Prashanth Krishnaswami
3. Rajaraman Subramanian
4. Aparajith Jayaraman
5. Shreekanth Mahendiran
6. Harish Sampath Kumar
7. Srinath Veeraraghavan
8. Akshaya Shankar
9. Vivek Shivram
10. Varun Swaminathan
11. L.Vidya Shankar
12. Dijo Philip Mathew
13. Aravind

Regards,
Srinath Varadarajan
Member, SIT

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 Sachin Vs Lara
The discussion began with each member providing his views on who his/her choice
would be and why he/she chose the particular player over the other. The various
arguments that were placed for Sachin Tendulkar were as follows:

 single minded aggression (not in words, but in action)

 his consistency
 his ability to handle pressure

The various arguments for Lara were as follows:

 better team player and captain,

 stylish
 greater endurance
 better temperament
 gentleman approach

Sachin & Lara after scaling yet another zenith in their illustrious careers:

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 Group Dynamics
With respect to the individuality of the player, it was argued on one hand that Sachin
was playing for himself over his team most of the time. On the other hand, It was
argued that a team is just a collection of members and all individual performances add
up to group performance on the whole. Hence Sachin did his part well.

The SIT further extrapolated the same, to think further into the varying aspects of
group dynamics. The following figure explains the group dynamics as discussed:

Figure 1: Group Dynamics

Group Goals

Synergy

Full potential Trade off with

exercised? priority setting

Achieve Goals

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Under the “synergy” concept in management, synergy is a phenomenon where the
effort of the GROUP of individuals in the organization is higher than the arithmetic
total of the individual efforts taken. It is a phenomenon where 1+1+1+1+1 is not 6,
but 600! However that synergy occurs only when the individual aspirations match
with the group aspirations and everybody contributes to full potential. If however, full
potential is not extracted, synergy cannot be achieved. This could be one of the
reasons why we see a class performer like Sachin performing in a match while the
team’s performance is still not up to the mark.

However, to achieve group goals, it is not always necessary that everybody has to
perform to full potential. A good group dynamics is also when a trade off is when by
individuals to sustain the group performance and results. Reference was made to the
famous Oscar winning movie “The Beautiful Mind” on the Nobel Prize Winning
Mathematician and Economist John Nash where John Nash sits at a table in the pub
with his friends when a group of girls enter the premises. Nash’s friends decide to try
for one blonde pretty girl and one friend says:

“Every man for himself. Don’t you remember Adam Smith – The best results
of a group come when every individual does what is best for himself”.

Nash thinks for a while and later comes up with one of today’s path breaking theories.
He says thus,

“What if nobody went to the blonde girl at all?” The others look down on him
when he explains further “If we all go for that blonde girl, each one fights
with each other and makes sure that the other doesn’t get the girl, hence we
land up with no one getting the girl. We then go to her friends, but they would
never want to be second choices, hence we land up getting nothing! But what
if we never went to the blonde girl in the first place, and we go directly to her
friends? We will all get a girl and none will lose at the end. Hence Adam
Smith was wrong, the best results come when every individual does what is
best for himself and what is best for the group!”

The Movie The group dynamics where the blonde girl is left out

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This is one of the major reasons why we see some players letting go of their centuries
so that the team can declare and proceed for a potential victory. This concept is also
very evident in organizational politics where trade offs and wholesome compromises
are required for sustainability. At home, even for watching television, we find parents
trading off their individual and watch a show that everyone at home can watch. This
makes sure that no one in the household, especially the kids is dejected.

This is also where the concept of priority setting comes to play. When objectives are
to be met, there is always a trade off of some kind that is required and at different
situations we have different kinds of trade offs. However, for every gain there is a loss
(may or may not be the measure) that we tend to make and we call them trade offs.
The intensity of the trade offs determines the decision to be taken and hence the
concept of priority takes shape where objectives are prioritized. Hence in a team
game, it is essential that the team results need to get prioritized and hence the
individual milestones or objectives have to get traded off to an extent where there is a
win-win situation for both the individual and group objective.

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 Celebrity Credibility
Another observation that came up in the discussions was the charisma that Sachin
Tendulkar holds that instils the “he is there with us” positive attitude in the team
members. Reference was made to the Mumbai Indians (IPL team)’s performance after
Sachin entered the series after an injury and the team’s morale went up with just the
“Sachin is there with us, why worry!” sentiment !

Sachin Leading Mumbai Indians

This concept is very essential to understand as the same can be applied to a lot of
situations the immediate of which is in the field of marketing and advertising where
the celebrity factor plays a major role. The fact that someone whom you respect or
someone who you can count on is with you, pushes you further in performance. This
can also be seen in sports where the player’s mother / father accompanies him for
every match/game.

The celebrity credibility concept is also applicable in situations where in case of a

possible product failure, the company’s CEO comes on public and assures that it is of
quality and he uses the same too!

The celebrity factor is not linked to personalities alone. It can also be linked to brand
value where some of us tend to go for the branded merchandise as we assure
ourselves of the quality and the reduction of the possible failure.

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 The Pressure Situation
In the discussion, another point that was thrown up was the pressure factor that
differentiates Sachin and Lara. It was argued that Sachin is faced with a lot more
pressure from his countrymen as compared to Lara. However, another group
contended that Lara faced more pressure because greats such as Vivian Richards,
Garry Sobers, Desmond Haynes, Clive Lloyd, etc had set enormous targets for him to
break. Sachin, on the other hand did not have any other great comparable to him, at
least not in his own time. A Sunil Gavaskar the group contended, is not comparable to
a Vivian Richards and Sachin ended up raising the bar on his own.

From this thought, one could relate to the fact that pressure could be both peer
pressure and one based on expectations. Another discussion was whether pressure by
itself leads one to high performance. Though pressure is a catalyst, one could not say
pressure by itself leads to high performance since we have seen several instances
where people have been bogged down by pressure and they have failed miserably.
Hence, one could conclude that though pressure is a catalyst, what moves a person to
high performance and success is his character and attitude to handle the pressure and
perform and deliver every time.

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 Strategy – The captain
One argument against Sachin was that he was not a good captain while compared to
Lara. While everyone agrees how great a strategist Sachin is with his shots, timing,
penetrating the field, intimidating the bowler at the right time, etc., and he is a role
model for everyone in the team and in the country, why then is he claimed to be a bad
captain?

Lara and Sachin with their individual strategies that made them very unorthodox

On introspection, the thought was linked to the concept of individual vs group

strategy. Individual strategy would deal with identifying ones strengths, weaknesses,
performance levels, growth, etc. But group strategy would involve a lot more as it is
about identifying, using, translating into the performance the right person at the right
time and in the right situation. The real test of a leader would be more than knowing
his teammates from what they say but along identify by observation, imagination,
empathy, experimentation, etc. There is a lot of difference between “knowing” a
person and “understanding” a person and “studying” a person and “applying” a person
and “motivating” a person and “bonding” with a person. While as an individual player
and strategist you would not really need all these factors, you would need it ten times
as a leader. This would mean knowing about a teammate more than what he knows
about himself, giving him solutions to problems he has thought about and also to
those he has never thought of.

Hence, one would find that though in terms of individual accomplishments, Sachin
would be better than Lara, in terms of leadership, Lara would be better off. However,
both would not stand a chance against Stephen Fleming who is undoubtedly the best
captain New Zealand ever had and probably one of the best in the world though his
individual performance can nowhere be compared to that of Sachin or Lara.

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Coming to the role model question, one has to probably look at from the 80-20
perspective that is used in labour management. Under this concept, the labour force in
an organisation can be divided into the top 20, the middle 60 and the low 20
percentages respectively. The top 20% are the genius performers whereas the bottom
20 percent are the low performers. Under the management strategy, it is not suggested
to hold on to or even depend on both the top 20% because they have high
marketability and can single handedly handle situations and would not even require a
team. They may not be team players though their performances will be valuable. The
bottom 20% are not going to perform anyway. The thrust is on the middle 60% as
they have a greater scope for improvement, that they will be loyal, more cognizant by
the team as “one among them” and therefore, can be motivated more.

Though it would not be right to say that he is a not a team player and he never cared
about the team, one could possibly contend that he was a class apart that it was
difficult for the team to relate to as he might not have been “one among them” and
“just another person”. He was, indeed, more like a demigod than a leader.

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 Talent Vs Character
The topic then took a new shape with a round of discussion on talent vs character.
What leads to success ? Talent or character ?. It was argued that talent is everything
and it alone can lead to success on one hand, and on the other, it was argued that
talent is a spark while character is what changes it into action.

Talent is a gift that everyone possesses and that gets the individual into a team and
provides us with a competitive advantage. However the consistency and sustainability
is provided by character which, in turn, includes practice, temperament, attitude,
patience, etc. To put in a nutshell, “talent” is what gets you there while “character” is
what keeps you going.

A simple formula for the same would be Talent + Practice + Character + Attitude =
Success!

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 What did we learn?
1. Individual attitude to translate to group dynamics and results requires synergy
by exploiting the full potential of the individuals. This however requires
constant motivation.
2. Group dynamics also requires a trade off which is effected by priority setting
and objectives. Hence at certain times, we have to trade off certain things to
meet objectives.
3. Celebrity credibility is a powerful tool of motivation, performance and
marketing.
4. Pressure both by way of expectations and peer pressure does not lead to
performance. It is the attitude and the character to work under pressure that
achieves goals.
5. Strategy that an individual applies for himself is different from strategy for a
group. It involves identifying the right person for the right thing at the right
situation and timing. This involves a lot more factors and leadership qualities.
6. A leader has to be more than a performer. He has to be one among the team
where all can relate to.
7. Talent is a gift that gets a person into something but it is the character that
sustains and it pushes him forward. Hence Success = Talent + Practice +
Character + Attitude

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