Since our favourite team didn’t make it to the play-offs, our passions didn’t run very high on who should win. So we asked Dr Bhaskar Das for his response to the final of last evening for the May 30 edition of Das ka Dum. Read on…
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Q. Your takeaway from the IPL final? And the winner GT’s road to the Cup? Also, runner-up RR’s journey… so near but yet so far?
A. Both the IPL teams deserved to be in the final, as they performed at their best which demonstrated their strategic agility, grit and commitment to the game. But at the end of it, there has to be only one winner who could, on the day of reckoning, rise to the occasion and put up a performance that made them excel at the final race. For RR it was a great journey: from the bottom of the table in most of the past sessions to reach a final needs stamina and motivation. So kudos to get a place on the podium.
GT deserves kudos as, in its inaugural appearance, it has demonstrated that it will be a force to reckon with in future IPLs too (provided complacency doesn’t take over). The reason of GT’s excellence could be a typical case study in management skills: the team played with such commitment as it never appeared that this IPL season is its first one. Hats off to the team management and the players.
A team is a constellation of aspirations where a distributed aggression gets precedence over a fixated strategic formula. Distributed aggression subsumes a strategic direction of course. And don’t forget that rejection (eg Hardik Pandya needn’t always depress people. For some it can reignite a spark).
Learnings:
1. Management by objective,
2. Victory loves preparation,
3. Stay in the present as how a team plays on the critical day is what matters,
4. Great leaders must have the agility/ adroitness to navigate any twist and turn of the operating environment (read pitch or googly)
and
5. playing as one TEAM by combining everyone’s strength can always win the day. Star players needn’t make a difference if the team is convinced of a shared destiny.
And as they say: “Everyone has the fire, but the champions know when to ignite the spark.”