Monday, April 10, 2006

Goal ~ Learnings from Cricket

There is a saying in the corporate world: "Set a goal which you feel is difficult to achieve". How correct is this? Does this mean that I should set a goal which I think I can never achieve? Shall I set a goal like: "I will be the President of this country someday" or "I will be a CEO 20 years down the line" or "I will be a world champion Tennis player in next 5 years". Well all of these sound so good and great, yet how many of us actually think of setting such bigger goals?

All achievements start with a dream and finally you realise it. You set your goal such that everytime you go one step ahead, you feel there is more pain and therefore more gain ahead! Is it good or bad? Well my point of view : You must be happy wherever you are, but there should always be a thirst for "more" ("ye dil mange more"). And always keep in mind! You must enjoy the journey, no matter what the end result is!!! The longer the journey, the higher the satisfaction!!!

Now let us try to analyse some of the cases in Cricket! Richard Hardley set a record of 431 wickets in history of cricket and that remained untouched for quite sometime. It became a milestone for somany players like Kapil Dev. Kapil finally ended up achieving that. Now had Richard Hardley not set such a goal, Kapil might have ended up taking less wickets, probably 350+. The learning to drive home: When you feel the goal is impossible and away from you, you drag yourself with belief that you will reach there someday.Finally you reach there due to sheer will power, self-belief and sincerity. The harder n tougher the goal, the better it is!!!

Now let us analyse from a different angle. What happened when people saw that Kapil achieved that target too? They thought it is "easy". Kumble, Warne, Walsh and Murli thought, they can surpass that record easily and they did it. It is a fact that they turned that record looks very ordinary. What does it mean? It says: No matter how big your goal is, there always remains a goal higher and bigger than that. So never get complacent when you reach there. Keep going!!! That's what Murli and Warne doing.

Now come to Sachin! My best ever player! Now he looks satisfied with his achievements. He probably thinks that he has done enough, broke all records. But my dear!!! it's not yet over. It looks like he had set a record to reach 34 Test hundreds and there he is! satisfied, contended and proud. Well! If I were to teach him, I would say: Reaching the expectation and target is always challenging, but maintaining them is much more challenging. That's what expected from Greeat Guns!

Thanks
Bijaya

2 comments:

Deba said...
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Deba said...

The record by Richard Hadlee was intact for a very long time, because no body believed that, he can break this record. So, Actually, Kapil Dev by breaking this record, made it easy for the fellow bowlers such as Walsh, Murali, Warne and Kumble to believe that they can do the same.

E.g. It is little awkward for us to believe that a fellow software engineer with same experience as ours can earn 100% higher than us. But, once we see one of our friend or acquaintance doing the same, we start believing that we can also repeat the feat and start taking that as the baseline. Then, we strive to achieve higher.