7 Magical Lessons I Learnt As A Cricketeer

I played for more than six years in my school cricket team, nearly made it to the Karnataka State team. And a lot of people don't know this about me. In this podcast I want to share the seven magical lessons that I learned as a cricketer, thus impacting my business.

It was back in the 90s that I remember the first time I got to go to my school cricket selection for my school team. I was my fourth standard. I remember the day I went, changed, the coach asked me to pad up, I went and padded up and played a few shots and I got selected. I got selected to be a part of the under 13 school team and I learned some magical lessons. I played all the way until my 10th for Bishop Cotton Boy School in Bangalore. And it was a very prestigious feeling to be playing as a part of the school team against many of the other ICSE school teams. And I've got some of my best lessons in life playing cricket in school. And I thought, I'll decode those lessons in this particular podcast and share the seven magical lessons that I learned as a cricketer. The first lesson is the magic of having a coach. I remember the first time I got spotted this coach, his name was Mr. Ramdas. He saw something in me that I never knew that was there in me. And he started to nurture and train me in the area of wicket keeping. So I remember waking up at 6am in the morning or 5:30am in the morning, going to St. Joseph's Hostel grounds on Langford Road and this coach would come exclusively for me and he would train me, he would make me run around the ground, do the warm up and then he would specifically coach me in wicket keeping. And I was wicket keeping. I was wicketkeeper, opening batsman during my, know, the school days and it was amazing. So the magic of a coach is for me, this man was my, you know, like a. He instilled the belief in me that I could do something which I never knew I could. And also magic of having a coach who demonstrates tough love. He was a very tough love coach. He would never say that unify done well or unify used to perform well. He would never comment saying that you are awesome or anything like that. He would always say, okay, you can do better next time. So having a coach who can, who believes in you, who trains you at a level and does not praise you just like that was one big magical lesson that I learned which I'm able to incorporate back into my business where I want to be that kind of a coach to others. Okay? Not that I don't praise others. I'd love to acknowledge, appreciate people, but I like to push people outside their comfort zone and also make people believe that they can do something beyond what is already there inside them. So that's what I learned from my coach and that's the first magic. The second magical lesson that I learned as a cricketer is the magic of practice. They say that practice makes a man perfect or makes a woman perfect. So in my case it's like waking up at 6am and I should do this for years together. And since I was studying in school, ICSE school, 11 subjects to go through. So for me it would be like a 5am wake up, like hit the ground at around 6am, 6 to 8, the entire cricket practice, of course, the warming up and everything else. 8:30 would be the school assembly, so 8:00 o' clock I would go for my choir practice and I was also in the singing group in my school. So finish that. So once the assembly gets over, the classes would start at around 8:58:55 and I had to be in class by then. So for me it was a very early start of the day and then a whole day of school until 3:20 and then back to the field and evening practice in cricket. So, you know, the whole aspect of practice has been so impactful for me personally. I'm talking about anywhere between like three to four hours a day of practicing for at least five to six years. Everything right from the physical practice, mental practice, and when I look at what I'm doing right now in my own business, in one sense, every day I'm practicing my craft, even this podcast I'm recording, just because I want to just continue honing those skills of practicing and improving myself on a day to day basis. And I have to really thank my journey as a cricketer where I started to fall in love with the process of practice from a very, very young age. And that discipline has really helped me a lot. Which leads me to the third magic lesson as a cricketer is the magic of performance.

Performance ultimately boils down to that no matter how much you practice, ultimately you need to perform while you're in the game, right? So you may practice for hours together, but if you are not able to consciously deliver results for yourself and your team, then there's no use of any of that practice. So the only true value of practice is the result through performance. And for me, when I look back at my business, all those years of practice even I'm doing these podcasts and I'm doing videos and I'm doing webinars I've done more than 6 to 700 webinars. For me, every webinar is like a practice and I'm improving my performance from time to time to time to grow my business. So I really have to thank the cricketing days that has given me this perspective in, you know, in my own business, where I'm always looking at, you know, improving my performance. There are days that are good, there are days that are bad. And of course, when it comes to performance, you can't be always at peak performance. Like every cricketer, even if you look at the IPL or the Indian cricket team, every player does not have like a. They don't have a stint that is always good. They're going to have a phase where, where they're performing well and they're also going to have a phase where they're going to go downwards. Okay. And in the downwards in the valleys is when you pick yourself up to move to the next peak. So between the two peaks, there are always going to be valleys. And the same happens even in a sport like cricket. And that's what I learned. And that also applies in my business.

And the fourth magical lesson that I learned as a cricketer is, is the magic of performing with a team. The magic of a team. I've had some of my closest friends and closest bonds that I've had with the members of my own team. And since I was a wicket keeper, I used to really hold the entire team together besides the captain, in a way by which I was analyzing how the batsman would come in. I would play a few mind games, you know, to psych the batsman up a little bit. I would have some code words with bowlers, you know, like magic ball, biscuit ball. And we would psych the batsman up and we would get them out. Yeah. And we would have different kinds of strategies as a team to really, you know, have that collective performance. And today, when I look at my business, of course, businesses, slightly different thing for me to activate people together, to help people work together, to inspire, you know, my facilitators and my, you know, my quantum members and my diamond members and all the hackathon people to. I put them into teams and make them to compete with each other with a positive spirit. Now, that thing is what I got from my cricketing days. And I'm so glad that I got to understand the magic of a team. And see, once you have formed a team that, that trusts you and you have trust in your team, there's nothing better than that. Like, I know when I used to go as an opening batsman along. I was a right handed batsman on the non strikers and there would be a left handed batsman and we had such a synchronicity that we would just know what's going on. We didn't have to speak to.

Decide what the next thing would be. It was a very subconscious and a very telepathic communication. We would have to have that great start in the opening. And we've had some good days, we've had many bad days as well. But that's the magic of a team.

The fifth magic that I learned as a cricketer. The lesson I learned was the magic of undergoing pressure. They say that diamonds are created only under pressure and that's what I also experienced in my days. Imagine you know, being the opening batsman, there's a lot of pressure and there's been moments where my entire school was there watching, you know the semi finals, the finals of the Cottonian Shield. And you know I played many, many tournaments like this and that performance under pressure is something I cannot explain in words like you have to be there to or you should have played that sport to actually feel that emotion. You know when you have hundreds of people depending on you, your entire team depending on you for delivering a result and you pull through and you make it happen, you know there's no sweeter.

Emotion or that feeling of accomplishment and achievement than that feeling like if I just put myself in the shoes of Ms. Dhoni hitting that six to win that World cup, you know that feeling is priceless and that's what every sports person craves for. And the same applies even in my business. You know, when I set these big milestones, when I hit those big numbers in my business there have been some days where I've done some really awesome sales and like hitting it out of the park. You know, those are the days that I look forward to and I take inspiration. Of course there are going to be days where even in the pressure I break under pressure. Like during as an opening batsman there's been a few times that I've got out right in the first ball or the second ball and because I was unable to handle the situation at that point of time. And of course in those moments I have to, I used to reflect on what I can do better the next time and to improve that. And that's how the game is like even in business there's going to be moments where you know you may get zero sales, you may get zero results and you start to doubt yourself. And there were moments where I used to doubt Myself as a player, am I really worthy? I'm really good enough. And I used to set the bench also where consistent of, I mean there would be consistent rounds of not performing well. They would make me sit on the bench, I would not be able to play a few matches. Then I come back and then I had to perform, you know, so that bounce back and coming back and those pressures are so important. And the same applies even in life. There are going to be times in life where everything is going super fine and there's going to be times where you're going to be hitting those, those low points and it's how do you deal with that pressure that really matters. So that's another magical lesson that I learned as a cricketer. The other magical lesson that I learned is the magic of winning. You know, the magic of really taking the team and that feeling of winning a match and winning in a true spirit where even after you won, you go, you acknowledge you appreciate the losing side. And of course that feeling of yes, we did it as a team. There's been moments where I've not performed individually but as a team we have won. And that feeling is also priceless. And there's been moments where individual performance was really good but the team lost, so that really didn't matter. So even in business right now I take that same spirit. Meaning if I'm making money or if I'm growing in my business, that's okay. But, but what I want is my team to win. I want my students to win. I want them to get results, you know, that gives me a better kick than, you know, me scoring those runs, you know, and I have to attribute it back to my journey as a cricketer that has inspired me with this. And then the last point is the magic of losing. Yeah, magic of winning is good. Everyone wants to win. But there's some magic even in losing when you don't.

Hit your, your milestones. As I mean, as I mentioned before, you know, there have been moments that I've broken down under pressure and we have lost. And in fact the last year when I was leaving school 10 standard and moving into college, that was the last year we were playing the Cottonian Shield which is a very prestigious tournament in the cricketing, you know, in the inter school cricketing world in Bangalore. So it was the best of three finals, Cotton's versus Joseph's, Saint Joseph's European high school. Arch rivals like India, Pakistan, best of three finals. The first finals we win and I contributed to that towards the end. Hit like 23 runs and some 14, 15 balls and really notched those numbers up towards the end, and somehow we made it. And.

The next final, we lost. And then it was our last final and it was my last year of school. And for me, I was thinking, yes, we got to somehow win it. So when I leave school and move into college, it's winning the Cottonian Shield. It was something which was always an aspiration, and we lost badly in the third match. And I remember that day, even till now, the entire team was down because we were all just passing out. A lot of us were passing out from school and we were leaving school and moving into a different college. And it was a year of our board exams and stuff. And I remember the, you know, the supervisor of.

The senior school came in and spoke to us. He said, between the cup and the lip, there could be many slips, but no matter what you. No matter what slips you had, you got to look forward and march on straight on. You know, coming from Bishop Cotton's, the motto of the school is Nex dextrosum nexinistrosum.

Which means on straight on, on Cottonians on. That is the motto. And even the school song has that. So when we lost that finals, it felt that we've lost something big. But again, thanks to the upbringing and the. And the guidance that we had from our coaches, we were able to come through it. But even till today, there are regrets. But again, that's the magic of losing. In life. There are going to be moments where everything that you might have planned may not go the way that it should be, should go. And that only means that there's something better. There's something better waiting for you, or maybe there's a lesson embedded in there for you. Yeah, for me, the lesson was to move on. And probably that was one of those moments where I had to integrate a lesson that I actually learned fully when I flunked my 12th grade. So in 10th, we lost the finals. Yeah. Moved on to the 11th and 12th grade. 12th grade, I flunked my board exams.

And I think that was where I integrated this lesson completely. And I decided, okay, I need to move on straight on and never give up. And I found a space in Audio Engineering Institute and ended up scoring 92% over there. And long story short, from the media industry, moved into the digital industry to what I'm doing right now. So that's the magic of losing. So just to recap, as a cricketer, I've learned so much. The magic of having a coach, the magic of practice, the magic of performance, the magic of working with the team, the magic of dealing with pressure, the magic of winning, and the magic of losing.

I'm just here to tell you that.

Sport is such a powerful medium to learn. And if you have, if you resonate with this, I would love to hear your comments below on my blog post below. And if you have never played a sport, get into it. You know, play something which is a team game. There are many solo sports, but when you play a team sport, it's a totally different vibe and you can learn a lot of lessons from it. And if you're a part of my community, I hope you can integrate some of these lessons and look at this as a game. Look at this as a sport, because ultimately, it is a game. Okay? Don't take it too seriously. You know, when we finish a game and we finish the match, ultimately we go back home and we eat our food, go to sleep, and we start a fresh day, a new day. Fine. You win, next day is a new day. You lose, the next day is a new day. Does not really matter. You just need to ensure that every day you are able to come back fresh and play the game. Not to win or not to lose, but to be you, to perform and to love the process. That's what I'd like to leave you with. So if you love this, if you like this podcast, please subscribe to this on Apple and Spotify for more episodes like this. And if you're already a part of my community, that's awesome. If you're not, attend my next webinar. And if you're not my diamond member Upgrade, because that's where I'll take your game to the next level. All the best.