Anil Kumble - Captain, Leader, Legend talks about his views on technology, leadership and people.

The concluding session of the TechHR 2019 was a thrilling one with Ester Martinez, founder and chief, Peoplematters taking the stage to have a tête-à-tête with Anil Kumble. Here are the excerpts from the session.

 

Anil’s journey as a leader himself – dealing with complexity and how he overcome complexity.

 

Delhi is always special to me, because Ferozshah Kotla is the place where I took 58 wickets across 6 matches, I had played. I had the best performance of my career in 1999 at this city.

 

Being an orthodox spinner, challenges have been plenty for me from Day 1. For instance, people doubted by abilities by often wondering if I doctored the pitch, while I engineered it all my life.  The gap between my first and second match was almost 1-1.5 years. I was hardly 19 years old engineering student, young and naïve, not sure of what was ahead of me. Engineering was plan A for me while cricket was plan B. But it happened so that over a period cricket became my mainstream activity thus shifting up from Plan B to A.

 

I was always criticized for my bowling style since it was different from others. I had to prove people wrong with every match that I played. Sachin Tendulkar made a debut two matches before me.  At 16, he was revered as the best batsman and people believed he would break many world records. While he stepped out to prove everyone right, I was trying to prove that critics around me were wrong. The challenges for us were similar, how you look at it is very important. 

 

  “Sachin started two games before me. He had to prove everyone right. All my cricketing journey, I had to prove people wrong”

- Anil Kumble

 

South African series was crucial because I got my first 5-wicket haul in Johannesburg. It gave me the impetus to understand that I can be successful at international level. This incident made me realise that sustenance requires you to evolve and  innovate. During 96-97, my action meant that I can’t be successful outside India. I took it personally, went to Chennai and met VV Kumar, the former leg spinner who played for South Zone. I learned orthodox leg spin there and made minor modifications to my action and grip.  Applied the techniques during the Irani trophy and got 4 wickets. Three of them were in the slip, an assurance that new technique is working. However, we were struggling and needed to really bowl the opposition out. In the second innings, i went back to my original action.I took about 7 wickets in the second innings.  It was a defining moment for me even though we lost the match. That match taught me to believe in I am who I am, need to stick to what my strengths are and make those subtle variations to the bowling action. 

 

All of us have weaknesses. How you camouflage that weakness and make sure to keep calm by bringing strengths to the forefront defines a good sports person.

 

Sports taught me a critical aspect – to try new things out of my comfort zone, innovate and involve. It killed my self-doubts, allowed me to flourish and agree to the results of new things – good or bad. It helped me understand my strengths remain my strengths and not my weaknesses.

 

Anil as a leader (Captain) himself

 

Captain is an inspiration to all, especially being the captain of Indian Cricket team. Guess it came to me by default. He chuckles and continues. Neither Dravid, nor Sachin or Sourav were interested in taking it up. And Dhoni was too young and had just won the T20 cup.

 

The critical aspect for any leader is to contribute, own up responsibilities not just for yourself but for the team. Add up self-belief, honesty and transparency to this. There were 5 captains when I led the team, but there was not a moment of controversy amongst us. Being honest and transparent worked for me.

 

Your point of view on technology, how it excites you?

 

I was one of the first person to take a laptop the dressing room. I was asked in unison as to how will it help. People are seeing it for themselves today 😊

 

Cricket as a team game has adopted a lot of technologies especially in decision making. When I started my career, there was hardly anything other than TV. We used to ask one of our friends to record the match so that we can review our performance later. It is not the case anymore. Today, once the batsman gets out, he walks up to the computer analyst to understand what went wrong and where to improve.

 

However, I fear technology shouldn’t take away the fabric of the game – which is still a bat vs ball. While the decision making of an umpire is already taken over by technology, it shouldn’t lead us to a scenario where we will appeal at a computer.

 

Talking of the data available post each match, Kumble agreed that data is critical as it helps in informed decision making yet he strongly believes that one need a bit of intuition as well. He quoted the example of IPL franchise, wherein data drives the team.

 

Let us hope that combination of informed decision and intuition coexist in the game of cricket and sanity prevails he says while signing off.

 

There seemed to be strong parallels between HR fraternity and Cricketing fraternity when it comes to adoption of technology. It was iconic to hear a legend speak about his journey and his views on leadership and  technology.

 

Our appreciation to PeopleMatters for bringing Anil Kumble in for an inspiring session. Here is the link to the complete video.

 

Topics: #TechHR2019, Talent Management, HR Technology