Lessons from the crease

He brings to the table a ringside view of cricket; she, an extensive, hands-on experience of marketing. Harsha and Anita Bhogle play to each other’s strengths.

Is it possible to apply situations from the game of cricket to the world of business? Can you use the game to understand why, at times, victory is elusive despite your best efforts?

It is, if you ask cricket maven Harsha Bhogle and his management consultant wife Anita, who’ve just published The Winning Way — Learnings from Sport for Managers. The book is drawn from the eponymous corporate workshops that the duo, alumni of Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad, have been conducting for the last ten years. In fact, the book marks the completion of 300 of these “Winning Way” workshops.

 

The book is for young fast-trackers in the middle-management, and addresses issues such as team-building, leadership, change management, etc. The Bhogles reference cricket, for instance, how Shane Warne reached out to young non-English speaking Indian cricketers in Rajasthan Royals and turned them into champions; the lessons from Sachin Tendulkar’s failure as a skipper and the pitfalls of genius; and how even immensely talented players with a bad attitude (Shoaib Akhtar for instance) can be a burden on a team.

But, before you pick this 196-pager, affordably priced at Rs 200, there is a “spoiler warning” to be kept in mind: it’s not a “get-up-in-the-morning-at-six-and-you-will-find-the-milkman” book. In other words, it is not a self-help book. “I think it can be categorised as open-your-mind book,” says Harsha, stopping for a nod of consensus from his wife seated opposite. “[The objective is to] see what the best practice is in other professions and see how you can link it to yours. See what other great teams do and how, therefore, you can become a great team, a great individual.”

Harsha (49), a chemical engineer from Osmania University, Hyderabad, has had a very unusual career. After working in advertising for two years and in a sports management firm for another two, he moved to cricket commentating. For the last 12 years he has presented cricket on ESPN and Star Sports and has even had a talent hunt named after him — Hunt for Harsha.

Anita too began in advertising, with stints at Contract and FCB-Ulka. Anita — who found Harsha “nice and friendly but disorganised” the first time she saw him at IIM-A — then spent about ten years running a communications consultancy and a qualitative research agency, even scripting and producing three TV commercials.

Prosearch, the name of their company formed in 2001, comes from this “professional research” experience. Harsha’s ringside view of sports combined with Anita’s experience with brands and new business pitches helps Prosearch marry sports and management. Harsha makes the presentations that Anita, the content person, creates and in doing so, they play to each other’s strengths.

The Bhogles are hoping that the book will go down to Tier-II and Tier-III towns, where a person setting up a small-scale industry doesn’t have access to the “kind of training and thoughts extrapolated in this book”. It’s for this reason that the Bhogles have released it straightaway on paperback. They would be a touch disappointed if the book’s readership were to be confined to graduates of the IIMs and top management schools starting MNC careers, the couple confide. “If you see where India is coming from, be it the cricketer or the IIT graduate, it’s actually from the small towns,” points out Harsha with his trademark sunshine smile.