The Winning Way 2.0Learnings from Sport for Managers

by Anita Bhogle

This ‘hopelessness’ was vividly demonstrated before the semi-final of the Ranji Trophy in April 1991. The evening before the match, in the course of an informal discussion, it was suggested that Hyderabad had a chance against mighty Bombay, as they were then called. One of the players seemed to disagree. ‘Nonsense,’ he said (and here we are attempting a translation from the more colourful Hyderabadi dialect) ‘if you get the openers out, Manjrekar walks in, if you get him out, Tendulkar comes in, then Vengsarkar, then Kambli, then Pandit, how many do you think we can dismiss?’ Bombay batted the next day and went on to declare at 855-6 scored at just under 5 an over. A match had been lost even before it had begun and the action on the field was merely a self-fulfilling prophecy at work. Indeed at one stage when the Hyderabad captain pulled up a fielder for letting a boundary go through, he was told, ‘What difference does four runs make when they have made seven hundred!’ To create this sense of hopelessness in the opposition, the Australians decided they would seek to win, not only every Test, but also every day and every session. When the opposition analysed a game, and broke it down session by session, they had to come to the conclusion that they had won very little, if indeed they had won anything at all. To drive home the point, the Aussies made a chart with the days on one axis and sessions on the other. It meant you had fifteen boxes and you ticked a box if you won, pu...