The Winning Way 2.0Learnings from Sport for Managers

by Anita Bhogle

Hussain was to experience this situation when England came to India under him in 2002 and ran into Sachin Tendulkar in top form. Unable to work out a way of getting him out, they decided to frustrate him by bowling a largely negative outside the leg stump line. The man assigned to do the job was Ashley Giles, a workmanlike spinner who kept things tight. For the next eleven overs he bowled outside the leg stump to Tendulkar, a tactic that drew much criticism. This did keep Tendulkar quiet and ended up frustrating him. ‘If you can’t bowl him out, bore him out,’ the critics said, but as Hussain suggested afterwards, it was a better option than letting Tendulkar get a century! It was a boring job for Giles to do and the key lay in the captain’s communication of its importance. If a player knows his role and implements it well, a seemingly small role can become important. At the very least, it can raise a player’s self-esteem, as we saw with Gambhir.