The Maverick's Code - Leadership Strategies, Principles & Lessons from MSD

Preface

An explosive wicket-keeper batsman; epitomized by Adam Gilchrist of Australia apart from Alec Stewart of England; had been more or less a rarity for the Indian cricket since the introduction of the sport by the British to the sub-continent with the world’s first officially recognized cricket test match played over 144 years ago in 1877 at the MCG between England & Australia. When Adam Gilchrist hit his first set of initial centuries in the ODIs in 1998, a stupendous year for him in which he hit three centuries; India’s foremost contender for the job ever had still been studying in school and was still a year away from joining the Bihar cricket team which he ultimately did in 1999. Inspired by Gilchrist’s flamboyant stroke play and awesome display of raw hitting power, Dhoni chose to position himself for that specific role determined to ultimately fill that void for India which, in fact, had forced even Rahul Dravid to move behind the stumps for a short while, with the legend donning the wicket keeping gloves.

As the acclaimed strategy guru & authority, Michael E. Porter, has stated; Strategy is neither about being the best nor about one- upmanship but rather it is about being unique & niche in order to add superior value⁶³. Dhoni in more than one ways created a unique positioning for himself by differentiating himself effectively from the rest of the contenders, namely, Dinesh Karthik, Parthiv Patel and Dinesh Mongia respectively; while battling it out for that coveted role of wicket-keeper batsman in the team in the early 2000s, with Dinesh Karthik leading the contenders’ pack at the time.  

His selection for the ODI Series against Bangladesh in late 2004s, under Saurav Ganguly’s captaincy, and later exhilarating display of fireworks against Pakistan in 2005, paved the way for the unleashing of the Mahi-era for Indian cricket. He readily delivered the goods for India, with the gloves as well as the bat, within a year by effectively taking on the mantle of an explosive wicket-keeper batsman who went on to become the next captain of the team as Saurav Ganguly’s successor with huge expectations, a mountain of responsibilities and big shoes to fill.

However, he also developed a comprehensive system geared towards winning, pivoted around complete situational awareness & contextual ownership, transformational leadership of the team with his unique leadership style (with camaraderie & patented coolness on & off the field as hallmarks), transparency,  inclusivity & engagement apart from a hawkish game control on the field marked by decisive as well as precise, critical calls. All of these collectively have duly earned him the sobriquet of ‘Captain Cool’ and the well deserved respect of his teammates, praise of authorities & media, envy of his competitors and deification with an almost god-like fan-following which has stayed intact even after his formal retirement from international cricket. This is besides a collection of hard to beat statistics & records for the record book as captain & with the bat which are likely to stay in the annals of Indian cricket for a very long time to come...

The intent here is not to write a eulogy of any kind for glorification or appeasement from fan’s perspective but rather to decrypt his leadership process & the method to the mega successful madness of the cricketing genius which has had a tremendous impact & influence on the way the sport is played in our country. The objective has been to find the underlying strategies, principles & lessons with potential applications across business, sports and life apart from a host of other relevant areas, in addition, to future generations of cricketers & other sportspersons yet to come.

This is probably the first systematic & qualified inquiry into MSD’s leadership process & approach to cricket and the outcomes have been profound. The process has focused on analyzing MSD’s on-field process & tactics inductively in a longitudinal manner; while also drawing real-life stories from a spectrum of other arenas, including, the World’s most advanced Aerospace R&D unit, Business Leaders, Elite U.S. Navy SEALs, Brilliant Military Commanders & Generals leading their troops to victory and Former Sporting Legends who took their game to a new dimension altogether. It, thus, has been attempted as a compendium of leadership with a collection of strategies, principles, best practices & lessons; with the existing domain literature & theoretical frameworks being the overarching guiding beacon. It is intended to serve as a Blue Book of-sort for the tactical leadership echelon focused on small, specialized & high performance teams.

The seed, containing the work in its present form, was planted in August 2020 following the cryptic retirement announcement by MSD. The germination of the buried seed in its present form, however, happened from the telecast of IPL 2021 by Star Sports network in which the pre-match shows typically contain an animated short feature themed on a given day’s match & the playing teams as well as players. One such feature, aired before the CSK vs. DC match in IPL 2021, showed two animated characters, themed on MSD and Rishabh Pant, actually scrambling to lay their hands on a coveted book titled ‘MSD’s Success Mantras’ and it proved to be the Eureka moment...  

The analysis has been done with MSD’s career; spanning 2007-2016, as the captain of the Indian national cricket team; as the core pivot in which he developed & perfected his unique process which was a major breakthrough for Indian cricket at the time and brought it crowning glory along with multiple on-field successes. This has been in stark to the present context in which the captains of almost all IPL teams have been pursuing very similar blueprints and executing more or less replicable strategies & plans on-field based on the advantages & limitations accorded by the format. Also, the scope of analysis encompasses all the three formats of the game for a holistic analysis & overarching perspective. The statistical analysis provided throughout has been based on data hosted & provided by the ESPN CricInfo’s online Statsguru database.

Lastly, leadership, as any other domain, is a constant work in progress with its conception as a state of static perfection merely being a conceptual fallacy. Leaders, like everyone, have to be on their toes on the same evolutionary learning path to become an even better version of themselves every today than yesterday ad infinitum with discipline & commitment to the very end to be truly victorious meaningfully in career as well as life. Let’s stay mobile and keep walking nimbly...

Introduction

It was a pleasant spring day on April 05, 2005 in Visakhapatnam with the venue being the Dr. Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy ACA-VDCA Cricket Stadium where a cricket match was being played between the traditional arch-rivals, India and Pakistan. The ODI was the second match of the six match ODI series with Pakistan touring India. The Indian skipper, Saurav Ganguly, won the toss and elected to bat first with India’s opening pair of Sachin Tendulkar and Virender Sehwag taking on the Pakistan fast bowlers. The fourth over of India’s innings turned out to be eventful for Pakistan with Sachin Tendulkar getting run out on a throw from Yousuf Youhana at a personal score of just 2 runs off the 8 balls he played.

It was a big blow for India with Sachin having been dismissed cheaply. However, everyone was surprised to see the player who walked out of the dressing room to play at number 3. He was a wearing the number 7 jersey with long, flowing hair and an unmistakable, flamboyant appearance. The jersey read the name as M.S. Dhoni, which many had not come to recognize by then. However, their lack of recognition was going to be ephemeral with the same going to last just a single day as a new star was going to be born in Visakhapatnam that day.

Dada’s (Saurav Ganguly) decision to send a rookie Dhoni at number 3 was highly unusual given the star studded nature of the Indian batting line-up. However, the radical call was borne more out of Dada’s calculative mind with him wanting India to take-off right at the outset of the innings to be able to make the most of the pitch conditions. Further, he wanted Dhoni to have more time to play out there in the field as he had batted lower down the batting order in his four previous innings in international cricket without any real impact, especially, in India’s tour of Bangladesh of 2004. For Dhoni, coming out first down was his preferred batting position given that he had been batting at number 3 only in first class cricket. Dhoni took the guard and got off the mark with a boundary coming of an elegant off-drive.

In a subsequent double whammy for Pakistan bowlers, the power hitting duo of Virender Sehwag & MS Dhoni smacked them real hard to all corners of the ground with a partnership of 96-run forming between them in just over 10 overs. Sehwag, however, unfortunately lost out on his century by getting out at the score of 74. His dismissal brought Dravid on to the field and ‘The Wall’ provided Dhoni, the man on a demolition mission, enough stability at the other end to continue his decimation of a beleaguered bowling attack muscling fours and sixes in quick succession. In an impressive & outstanding display of belligerence, skilled stroke-play and firepower; Dhoni made his maiden century and finished his innings with a big hundred, making 148 runs, which came off just 123 balls. This included 15 fours & 4 huge sixes, of which, two of them were clobbered savagely over long-off. India ultimately made 356 runs in their assigned 50 overs that day, thereby, setting a daunting target for the visitors to chase & win which they just couldn’t manage to do. India won the match by 58 runs with Dhoni named as the player of the match.

Dhoni, thus, had arrived and announced his arrival in style with an awesome display of fireworks in a traditional, high-stakes arch-rivalry in front of a cheering home crowd. In the post-match presentation, Dada said, When I looked at the wicket in the morning it looked like it would crumble quite quickly, and might not even be good for batting for the first 50 overs. So the toss was absolutely crucial, and once we won it, it was important that we made as many runs as possible in the first 15 overs. That's why we made the decision to send Dhoni in and he played fantastically well.¹

Dhoni provided a quick glimpse of his precocious talent and the shape of things to come in his statement made in the post match presentation. He said, After I got to a hundred I felt it was important to push the scoring as much as possible so that we could make about 350. The ball was not doing anything off the pitch and I knew that even a score of 350 might not be enough.¹

An article appearing in media the same day was headlined A man possessed² with the first paragraph of the article reading out as, When Mahendra Singh Dhoni left the field today after having lashed 148 in only his fifth innings in international cricket, he had imprinted such an array of astounding strokes on the memory of those watching that a dozen knowledgeable observers could have each picked a personal favourite and no two choices need have been the same². It further had a piece of advice meant for the selectors in a caption, which read, Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s stunning 148 should finally settle the debate over India’s wicketkeeper-batsman in ODIs². And yes, the debate & the quest both were settled & the position was sealed with a crackerjack of a performance.

Marking one’s arrival with a debut or a rocking performance against Pakistan surely has been a dream come true for some other cricketers as well prior to Dhoni with the pack led by none other than the master blaster, Sachin Tendulkar, himself. Sachin made his test debut against Pakistan in November 1989 at the tender age of 16 while facing the pace battery of Imran Khan and Wasim Akram with the match played at Karachi. His ODI debut also was against Pakistan, a month later in December 1989, with the venue being Sharjah for the shorter format of the game. The key difference, however, was that Sachin got to his maiden century in his 79th game and after a span of almost of 5 years in 1994 against Australia in Colombo. However, it took him only 8 test matches to get to his first test century coming against England in 1990 at the age of 17 while batting in tricky English conditions. 

Indian opener Navjot Singh Sidhu also made his maiden ODI century against Pakistan at the Champions Trophy played at Sharjah in October 1989. Sidhu made 108 of 121 balls, however, India ended up being on the losing side despite having put a score of 273 on the board while batting first. Sidhu’s maiden century came after 2 years of having made his ODI debut against Australia in October 1987.

Virender Sehwag, another explosive Indian batsman, too, made his ODI debut vs. Pakistan in April 1999. However, he also took a span of over 2 years to reach his maiden ODI century made against New Zealand of just 69 balls in August 2001.

However, against this backdrop, Dhoni’s maiden century coming in just his fifth ODI inning spoke volumes about and almost proved to be a harbinger of what destiny had in store for him and what he had in store for India and the nation’s beloved game...

Chapter - I

The ‘Disruptive’ Play Work and India’s Cricketing Roller Coaster

There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games, 

Ernest Hemingway

The word ‘Disruptive’ has come a long way from its original rowdy underpinnings to its present-day ingenious undertones with the hitch-hiking ride provided largely by the technology & business world arenas. It refers mostly to radical technologies, innovations & business models etc. that alter the market dynamics fundamentally. The term was analyzed, defined & used by American Scholar Clayton M. Christensen along with his collaborators in the mid-1990s in the technological context and it, in fact, has been termed as the most influential business idea⁴ of the early 21st century.

There is a slight difference between revolutionary & disruptive which needs to be understood here. Something which is disruptive may not be revolutionary and something which is revolutionary may not be disruptive either. If something is revolutionary then it should be able to get to the mainstream & become the new norm to be able to be called disruptive. For example, LEDs are revolutionary as they mark a major technological leap over traditional light bulbs. However, the ability of the LEDs to compete economically with traditional light bulbs & being able to replace them while providing a significantly superior overall value, in terms of way lower energy consumption, made them effectively disrupt the lighting market and become the new norm. Another way to put it is that revolutionary comes from & usually evaluated from the supply side based on degrees of evolution while disruptive is viewed & measured largely from the demand side based on market effect & impact.

Disruption, traditionally, has been spearheaded by small teams, with prominent examples being the SWAT teams with their array of unconventional weapons & tactics to tackle hardened criminals apart from the U.S. Navy’s SEAL teams that specialize in the utilization of a repertoire of disruptive methods & warfare tactics to attack highly fortified targets.

Cricket as a sport, however, with a similar, small team structure, has not been any exception to this inevitable process of disruption either. One of the most prominent examples of the pursuit of a truly disruptive model & approach to cricket dates back to the 1990s decade with the same ushered in by the pack of buccaneering Kiwis in the 1992’s ODI World Cup and perfected subsequently by the Sri Lankan Lions, with their radical approach to ODI cricket, during the ICC’s 1996 ODI world cup under their visionary captain Arujna Ranatunga and Australian coach Dav Whatmore.

When the Lions went on a Rampage

The Sri Lankan cricket team adopted a highly radical approach to their game in the 1996 ODI World Cup, a major departure from the conventional strategy. As per the strategy, they would go on the offensive with a belligerent approach to batting right from the word go aiming to maximize the first 15 overs of the ODI games. This was doable on the sub-continent’s flat pitches which offered virtually nothing to the bowlers and while doing so they would take the game away from the opposition by putting an above-par score on