The New Definition of Talent

Harsha Bhogle has initiated a debate on talent and how to define it, in his article today in the Indian Express (also available on CricInfo and possibly other media outlets). He not only redefines talent, he has even given a formula for it! Or at least, the headline writers at IE have... And it is:

"real talent" = ability x hard work + consistency

To me at least, this is a new term he's inventing... "Real talent" is what he'd like to use, to gauge a sportsman, because it is a good predictor of "success" -- now there's another term that begs a clear definition! But going by what he writes in the article, he's interested in seeing talent converted to results in terms of metrics such as runs scored, wickets taken, matches won, and even career longevity. What he then proceeds to prescribe, are the prerequisites of success, but he labels those as talent. Therein lies my disagreement. We can keep those two terms separate and agree that talent isn't a pre-requisite to success.

Harsha references Malcolm Gladwell (from "Outliers") in saying that 10,000 hours of practice, in other words, "hard work" can make someone shine in any chosen field -- whether it's Bill Gates coding away, or Bradman hitting a golf ball, or Agassi hitting 2500 tennis balls a day, or Kirsten's now-famous throwdowns to Sachin Tendulkar. This is in keeping with the Protestant work ethic that dominates our current thinking, whether in middle-class families or in management books. And who can argue against hard work, and maximising your chances of success via that route?

But is that really talent? Can't we make space for those who are truly special in some ways? Who may or may not be successful by traditional measures? Harsha uses the example of Rohit Sharma -- how his strokes make you go "wow". I've written about talent and class in the past, using older examplars like Gower, Mark Waugh, Ganguly... You could take examples from other sports, like Federer in tennis, Jordan in basketball, Messi in football. The point remains the same -- these players are special in some way. It's their natural grace, their fluidity of movement, apparent effortlessness, their uncanny knack of timing, the lack of brute force -- all of those and more, combine to make you go "wow". A Rohit Sharma or a Yuvraj Singh belongs in that category. A Jonathan Trott or Ricky Ponting does not.

Now absolutely, that "class" does not guarantee success at any level of cricket. I believe the examples of Bradman, Tendulkar etc. are misleading -- they were both talented and hard-working. But their stupendous achievements owe a lot to their talent, not just to hard work. A Gower or Ganguly racked up great records (successes?) despite their aversion to hard work. Tendulkar might not have had as long a career, with as many records, but he would've gone down as an all-time great batsman even if he hadn't done all that practice with Kirsten. Hard work is admirable, sure. But talent is what makes you go "wow", lets you enjoy watching the sport.

Society today worships success to an inordinate extent. We value hard work and material returns over creativity and its attendant risk of failure. If an author writes a great novel but fails to find a publisher, he may be labelled a failure. But is he any less talented for it? A programmer may develop a great application, but his startup may "fail". Is he any less talented as a programmer? And a cricketer may play graceful, pleasing cricket, but not rack up enough runs to make it to the top. His game may not be seen by as many spectators as it might have, with hard work or luck or a godfather. But is he any less talented for it?

History is replete with examples of talented cricketers who underperformed relative to their talent. What does that mean? Doesn't it mean that they had as much talent as some others who achieved success, but didn't capitalize on it? Talent may need to be allied with hard work to achieve consistency. On top of that, you need some luck, and often the right contacts, to achieve success. But even in the absence of all these supporting factors, talent doesn't vanish -- it's there for all to see!

I call myself a "cricket stalker" for a good reason. There are some, perhaps many of us, who like watching cricket because it's a beautiful game. Not because we follow a particular team or player, and want them to win every time. Not because we want to see lots of runs scored, or wickets taken. Just for the sheer beauty of the proceedings. And you can find that beauty in a lower-division club game too, not just in international cricket. Talent, whether in batting, bowling or fielding (but I admit, mostly in batting) is what attracts me as a spectator. Just as beautiful prose is what makes a book worth reading, often, not the message contained therein. Please do leave some space for cricket as art...

The Allure, and the Pitfalls, of All-time XIs

It seems like the season for "All-time XIs" has returned with a vengeance, thanks in no small part to CricInfo's series of country-specific XIs, followed up with a World XI. This is really the armchair cricketer's ultimate delight. What better way to indulge your fantasies than to cook up a couple of all-time XIs and imagine (or even better, simulate, perhaps with book cricket!) a game between them?

Back in 1994-95, when Usenet was still usable, the newsgroup rec.sport.cricket saw a sustained frenzy of all-time XIs. The leader of the pack then was a respected poster called John Hall, who kicked things off by posting a series of "alphabet XIs" -- e.g., the "A Team" comprising of players whose names start with A, and so on. Not quite 26 of them, because some alphabets got combined to get to critical mass (e.g. the QXYZ team), but great fun nevertheless. Must have taken an enormous amount of research. He followed that up with teams from each decade in which Test cricket had been played, which was another tour de force! Of course, as soon as each team was posted, it drew in the rest of us on rec.sport.cricket, with our own "expert comments" on John's sins of omission and commission!

Naturally, no two posters could agree upon an entire XI, but that is almost besides the point. The allure is in reliving the careers of these all-time greats, debating their relative merits, etc. As a bonus, many a thread also spun off from these topics into discussions of the personalities and careers of those involved, especially the relatively lesser-known cricketers who made it to the all-time XIs because of these artificial constraints of alphabets or specific decades.

There are of course pitfalls in making these sorts of comparisons across generations. One argument goes that the relatively recent players, whom you've had the chance to watch, follow, perhaps even idolize, are more likely to make the grade than earlier ones whom you have only read about. On the flip side though, older players tend to be romanticized with the passage of time. History mostly records their successes while glossing over their failings; hagiographies abound.

Modern players are exposed to a wider set of playing conditions -- far more venues, varying equipment, with/without floodlights, with/without umpire reviews, bowlers using slower balls, doosras etc. -- that didn't exist in the old days. The oldies however had to deal with uncovered wickets, and that too in places like England with fickle weather! They didn't have protective helmets and arm-guards. They had to travel long distances by ship, train, buses... Flip again -- the fielding standards, and on average the catching standards, have improved dramatically. So the oldies might have got away with snicks through the slips etc. that they wouldn't, today. Or would've got boundaries for what would only be a single today...

With so many contradicting signals, how can the armchair cricketer even begin to compare cricketers across eras? Clearly, a direct comparison of statistics doesn't seem fair -- we don't know whether these factors cancel each other out. The written word is also unreliable -- whether it's the cricket correspondent covering a Test match, or an autobiography, or a book like Sunny Gavaskar's "Idols"...

I believe the closest we can get to an objective comparison is if we compare statistics within the same 'era'. This of course requires a clear definition of eras in cricket, and then identifying contemporary cricketers whose careers substantially fall within that era. This was relatively easier in the early days, when the World Wars provided some natural delimiters for eras, and several careers were terminated by those wars. In more modern times, perhaps we can identify two eras based on the teams that dominated those years -- the West Indies era (1970s and 1980s), and the Australian era (1990s and 2000s). Many careers don't fit nicely into those eras though -- a Bishen Bedi, or an Alan Border, for example.

Nevertheless the relative performance of a player, when compared with his contemporaries of the same kind (bat/bowl/keep/allround/captain), seems to be the only reasonable yardstick of greatness, and thus, selection in an Alltime XI. In batting for example, a Test average of 50 was considered the yardstick of greatness during the 1970s-90s, and possibly earlier as well. The very best batsmen of those years -- Sunny Gavaskar, Greg Chappell, Viv Richards, Javed Miandad -- reached and sustained that mark. Very few others were able to sustain a 50+ average over a long career. That benchmark seems to have shifted up by 4-5 points in recent years. Today's greats are all in the 54-57 range -- Sachin, Ponting, Kallis, Mike Hussey, et al. Dravid and Lara are lower, but probably dropped off from that range. Clearly we cannot claim that all of today's greats are significantly better than those of the 1970s (and a 4-5 point difference in batting average is significant!). Thus it makes sense to compare only with contemporaries whose careers overlapped for the most part.

All that is fine for a scientific, or statistically defensible exercise in selecting an Alltime XI. But, all said and done, it's eventually a very personal, emotion-riddled flight of fantasy! So who's to quibble with the critic who prefers a Dravid to a Vishy, or someone who selects a Dhoni ahead of Kirmani as his keeper? To each his own, and the more the merrier, and I'm all out of cliches now!

Cricket Australia on a roll

Australian cricket is arguably in decline -- after all, how long could they be expected to dominate as thoroughly as they did? But meanwhile, Cricket Australia seems to be on a roll. At least, they appear to floating some interesting trial balloons!

Separate Test and T20 teams

The first one came a few days ago when James Sutherland, the CEO of Cricket Australia, suggested that Australia could soon have separate Test and T20 teams playing simultaneously. On the face of it, a novel and even scandalous idea! How can there be two "Australian" teams? But surely, it's not as scandalous as England's two Test teams way back in the 1929-30 season. Then, England (or rather, MCC) actually played simultaneously in New Zealand and West Indies -- and won both those series! All those Tests were, and still are, classified as official Tests. But of course, at the time, England were a world power and the ICC was the Imperial Cricket Conference, so they got away with it.

More recently, at the 1998 Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur, cricket was included as a medal sport. India and Pakistan had a pre-scheduled series in Sharjah at the same time, so both teams ended up sending weakened teams to Kuala Lumpur, and simultaneously playing full ODIs in Sharjah. However, the Commonwealth Games matches were not classified as ODIs (although they got List-A status of course). A similar situation seems set to occur again at the Asian Games later this year in China -- clashing with pre-planned series (for India, at least).

Back however, to Cricket Australia's idea -- separate T20 and Test sides. Why is that inconceivable? So what if there are two "Australian" teams? Clearly, Test cricket and T20 are very different sports... it's hard for me to even call T20 "cricket", as I've argued earlier. So it's like a country having a hockey team and an ice-hockey team at the same time! Sure the sports are similar in many ways, but overall they're so different that it's perfectly reasonable to call them two different sports. I think over time, Test (or first-class) and T20 (or even List-A) cricket will drift apart so much that it'll be easy to accept that they are different sports. Players will specialize in one or the other sport/format from a young age, so that separate teams will naturally arise. Already today, probably close to half the T20 internationals cannot find a place in their corresponding Test sides!

In the bargain, the 50-over ODI seems destined to die, neither satisfying the purists nor the bang-bang T20 audience. Which brings us to the second trial balloon floated by CA this week!

Two-innings One-dayers

So Cricket Australia is considering a new domestic competition in this new two-innings format, where each team will play 20 (or 25) overs in an innings. Actually "innings" is a misnomer here, because the idea is to carry forward the state of the game between a team's first and second innings (kinda like baseball). The batsmen only get one chance to bat, and the bowlers still only get to bowl their allotted quota of overs. Things don't start afresh in the second "innings", as they usually do in first-class cricket. So it's basically a 40 (0r 50) over a side, single-innings match.

The idea itself is not very new -- Sachin Tendulkar suggested it a few months ago, at which time I'd written a blog post supporting this "20-20-20-20" format, with a few suggested tweaks -- the main ones being that all 10 wickets should be available in each 20-over split, field restrictions should be eliminated, etc. What's new however is that a national cricket board is actively considering implementing it.

My take is that both these "innovations" by CA are welcome, and worth trying out. Cricket has already, clearly, split into two forms. The "pure" form still retains its attraction, if not to (lots of) spectators, then to the players themselves. Because as any player will tell you, Test cricket remains the best test of skill, unencumbered by restrictions on bowling and fielding. And the shorter form (whether T20 or 20-20-20-20) will clearly be attractive commercially, pulling in the spectators, TV audiences and advertising revenues. The demands (in terms of skill, physical, mental) of these two forms on the players are so different that it seems inevitable that specialization will occur naturally. Secondly, the two-innings format should also be tried out. The T20 version is a bit too short -- it doesn't provide enough advertiser inventory (time) to make two-country series viable. You need two T20 games in a day -- and thus, a four-team competition, at least -- to rake in the moolah. Might as well have a single "20-20-20-20" game instead in a day, between two teams!

The Business of IPL

Another guest post by Satya Prabhakar, the author of that last one I'd posted, dating back to 1994. This one's much more contemporary though, talking about the IPL business model and Lalit Modi.

Here's Satya:

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The success of a business depends on the following, in the order of decreasing importance: opportunity, competition, business model, resources and execution. First, there must exist a ready opportunity to exploit and a customer base willing to buy what you seek to sell. It helps – and, frankly, it is lot more fun – to have little or no competition so you may charge monopoly rents and frequently go on nice, long vacations. Then there must be a proven business model to maximize revenue and profits without having to suffer travails, trials and errors in arriving at the optimum model. The enterprise must then be adequately resourced to build the business. Finally, success demands focused, determined execution, a judicious mix of short-term performance and long-term planning.

If the first four work out to the advantage of the company, it affords a wide margin of error in matters of execution. If you enjoy a huge opportunity, no competition, proven business model and adequate resources, it doesn’t really take a genius to manufacture success. One still needs to be smart and work hard...it’s just that one doesn’t need to be extraordinarily gifted or lucky to triumph.

While IPL sure is a raging success, far too much credit is given to Lalit Modi for its success than he deserves. Even a Dimpy or Rahul Mahajan could not have messed it up too badly. Let us think this through a bit.

India has a voracious, insatiable appetite for cricket. We Indians are so stupid we will watch a 5-day test match, complete with tea and tedium, only to find it has ended in a draw…an activity that is only slightly more exciting than watching grass grow or paint dry or an RGV movie. In the small school playground opposite my house, there are about six different cricket matches going on simultaneously among local kids and adults. Such is our love for the game that finding Tendulkar among the pantheon of Gods in the puja room of a friend or relative doesn’t evoke much surprise. So the market opportunity for a more exciting, more localized, shorter game of cricket was a given. It was there on the table, nicely wrapped with glitter foil and red ribbon, waiting to be picked up.

IPL, from the start, enjoyed double firewall monopoly. Not only did it enjoy the monopoly cricket has as a sport in India, it also enjoyed the monopoly BCCI has over cricket in India. Indians care only about cricket and can’t tell the difference between Sania and Saina. In the US, for example, there is wide and comparable following for professional football, professional basketball, professional baseball, college basketball and college football…each sport has to compete with others for a share of the audience. Further, in India BCCI rules cricket with an iron fist, snuffing out any competition, however nascent, by withholding grounds and spots on the national team from players who cross the line (see Chandra, Subhash). Ask any businessman what causes the most grief and plummeting margins…it is persistent, pestering competition that drives down prices and eat into his market share: it is competition. IPL, thanks to the iron grip of BCCI on the sport and the monopoly cricket enjoys in the mind of the Indian had zero competition.

Crediting Lalit Modi with the innovation of local franchise-driven league business model is like crediting Tatas with innovating the automobile. The concept of local sporting franchises owned by businesspeople is more than 100 years old, devised and honed to perfection by the Major League Baseball (MLB), National Football League (NFL), National Basketball Association (NBA), and English Premier League (EPL). The business model with its various nuances such as revenue sharing, national/local sponsorships, TV rights, player auctions, salary caps, free agent trading, controlled expansion (to create artificial scarcity, driving up prices bid for new franchises) has been tweaked to maximize revenues at different levels and ensure a competitive, exciting league. Nothing that was done with respect to IPL is either new or ground-breaking.

When it comes to resources, the super-rich BCCI was the sugar daddy of IPL, willing to fund and bankroll it with whatever money is needed, eliminating the need for Modi to go and pitch to hundred different skeptical VCs to raise funding for this greenfield venture.

And that leaves execution for which Lalit Modi was extolled by many to high heavens. But recent revelations indicate even when the deck was heavily loaded in IPL’s favor, Modi couldn’t do a good job of executing. Allegations of missing documents, corrupted bidding process, secret kickbacks, sweetheart deals, sleaze, wealth and flash incommensurate with known sources of income and poor governance…all point to a person who is not fit to build an enduring enterprise with systems, processes, transparency and professionalism.

Modi is neither a founder nor an entrepreneur as many erroneously paint him to be. An entrepreneur takes risks and struggles to found a company against steep odds, and suffers endless syncopated rhythm of tribulations and triumphs. Modi was a political appointee assigned to the post and bankrolled by people in power whose favor he curried. He supervised a new business unit of the mega-corp BCCI which enjoyed unimaginably favorable odds. It shouldn’t, therefore, come as a surprise that he is fired from the same job to which he was appointed when he falls out of favor with the same dons that perched him there.

With or without Modi, IPL is set to continue its roaring success.

Satya Prabhakar is the Founder and CEO of Sulekha.com. He can be reached at satyaprabhakar@gmail.com