Leadership Lessons from Cricket Field - Epilogue

This is the story of early 2000s. I was selected as a field captain for my team. To all who are not aware of the role of field captain, the person has literally no power, except managing the practice sessions, calls out bowlers to bowl, batsmen to pad up, shout out last round or plead people to take a round of the ground and stretch. It's a pathetic job.

I have played for larger and bigger clubs earlier. But due to time constraints and cut short the travel time, I was looking for a club nearby. There were three clubs, the MP YCC, promoted and sponsored by then Member of Parliament of my region. And one was a low profile looking Azad Club, bunch of spirited but not so promising. Third one was youngest and naive. Since, I had to cut short my number of outside matches, so that I can have spare time for my college cricket practice, studies and college classes, I chose the third one. It was once a most prominent clubs, but after retirements of its stalwart, the club was under inexperienced younger lot.

After spending few weeks, I was nominated as Field captain, because my inputs uplifted the young team's performances. The credit also goes to them adapting my suggestions during practice sessions. 

Anyway, I loved it. And my team has also decided to make me captain of one team during match practices.

My team, during practice matches used to consist of mostly challengers, with some regulars, including me, just to balance the team composition. To my credit, I never lost any practice matches.

I learnt the leadership Lessons from various players who captained me. Not that they were a Ganguly or Dhoni. But each of them had some qualities, which a leader should possess.

I am not going to elaborate the skills in this part, but will do so in upcoming parts of this series. 

As a field captain, all I used to do was, to sweat and make my team sweat during practice sessions. But never ever abused or raised my tone when they committed mistakes during the matches. 

This simple thing earned me the support of my team, and in turn they never let me down, and earned me the nickname of "Steve Waugh", the famous Australian captain, almost invincible and one of the most respected international captains of that era. The nickname could also be attributed to the fact, that I too, thou much smaller in stature than Mr. Waugh, was a batting allrounder. 

Rest in upcoming episodes.