New Delhi Times - Gaurav Bhatnagar reporting from New Delhi, India

Great post Gaurav.To me it is your best post.Yesterday only I was thinking on same lines.There is so much to learn from Australian team.To me most suprising part is their consistency.This si what a process do to your organisation .Right process bring consistency in desire results.Australians have develop such an efficient process that everyone in that gives his best and perform beyond his potential.IMHO every start-up must understand importance of RIGHT process as early as possible.But as u said geting a process right is a challenge.

A brilliant analysis !

Agreed :)
But the processes in place must ensure that individuals do not feel bogged down by them.
The processes should not in anyway prevent a potential 'Star Performer' from realizing his/her true potential. The processes must be implemented 'in spirit' as a framework with scope for modifications or even exceptions as and when required and not as a 'rigid' set of rules. Australia is a great team and it's true that they seemed to have evolved a 'near-perfect' system which does not depend on individuals; However, even Australia has and has had star performers like Glenn Mcgrath, Shane Warne, Ricky Ponting, Steve Waugh. I doubt whether without their contributions, Australia would be the team it is today.

All said and done. Tha fact of the matter is that the BCCI is the Richest Cricket Board in the World.

This world cup has been the most boring so far because India and Pakistan both were out before the cup even started.

Sorry to say, but if it weren't for Indian Cricket, there would be no world cup and the aussies won't have been as great as they are.

So everyone should really thank India for making cricket what it is.:-)

Hi Gaurav,

Very neat and humble thoughts, made a good reading.

But there's a saying 'Experience matters in most human endeavors but the problem of getting a cat down of a tree is new every time it arises'

I myself promote a structured work methodology but processes in industry do not work very fine in industry. You yourself have worked in MS, you should question yourself as well.

If we analyze it objectively:
1. Cricket team is small, therefore, room for implementing a process is bigger with lots of scope of its success. Industry grows with demand, quite unlike to cricket team, therefore, People orientation becomes inevitable.

2. The area of focus for every cricketer is one pitch, whereas in industry it just seems to intersect but never comes to a single arena. Unless you have all great programmers as developers, leads, managers, HR, pantry guys etc. It is the only way this focus can be achieved which is relatively difficult for any organization.

3. Many times reasons for success is not that the things fell in place for one team only but also that things did not fall in place for other teams simultaneously as well. I know am being highly optimistic here but this is how the things are.

But this analysis doesn't still answer how can you get success and dominate the "game of uncertainties" with this certainty. Its been a good food for thought with this line.

loved the third paragraph...

Excellent food for thought on how teams
excel -- and as with many aspects of
human excellence, the root-cause pertains to
the philosophical, and spiritual.

see--

http://www.buchanancoaching.com/Philosophy.html

and this article from some newspaper....

Coach's pursuit of perfection

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Greg Baum
May 16, 2007
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* Buchanan relishes 'fairytale' finale

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AUSTRALIA already ruled the cricket world when John
Buchanan became coach in 1999. It won all of his first
15 Tests, a record streak. The coach must have felt
that the only way from there was down, and that he was
on a hiding to nothing.

Not a bit of it. "I just believed there were a lot of
things that could be improved," Buchanan said this
week. "Though the Australian team was playing well, I
felt they were really only scratching the surface of
their ability, and of what Australian cricket had to
offer the rest of the world.

"That was how I approached it, and continued to
approach it, and that is still what I believe now."

More success ensued, more trophies, another World Cup.
Australia lacked a strong and consistent challenger to
its hegemony, which usually leads eventually to
laxity, complacency and a fall.

But Buchanan's Australia maintained its pitch. "One of
the things a coach strives for in his career is to
have his team play a perfect game," he said.
"Error-free. It doesn't mean you don't lose a wicket,
and that the other team doesn't score a run. It means
you don't make any controllable errors.

"We haven't played the perfect game (yet). But we do
have the perfect team, one that constantly tries to
improve itself, individually and collectively."

Buchanan said that even as Australia's pile of spoils
grew, motivation never waned. "If it had, it might
have meant we had the wrong players, if they needed
some form of reward, punishment, external incentive,"
he said. "It hasn't been about motivation. It's been
about creating an environment for a group of players
who want to improve themselves all the time.

"We've never compared ourselves to our opposition. We
would look at our opposition as preparation. But our
comparison was always with ourselves. That's one of
the key reasons the Australian team is different."

Buchanan was a new type of coach for a new time.
Famously, his mind roamed far and wide for ideas: a
Chinese warrior one moment, British rower Sir Stephen
Redgrave the next, a boot camp in between. He also
exploited technology like never before in cricket.

He admits that some players were sceptical. "From some
quarters, that wouldn't have changed," he said. "That
was never really too much of a concern, provided I
didn't ostracise myself from the team. I don't think
that was the case." Besides, Shane Warne is retired,
too.

But Buchanan did question even himself in 2005 as
Australia unexpectedly gave up the Ashes after 16
years. "It would be naive to say we don't doubt our
methods a lot of the time," he said. "In doubting
them, you continually test them, reassess them,
improve them.

"In that series, there was more than the odd doubt
here and there. There was collective doubt." But
within weeks, it was supplanted by the old swagger.

There was a lull in 2003 when Australia played almost
continuously through a home summer, then went on to
win the World Cup in South Africa, then a Test series
in the West Indies. It led a subsequent one-day series
4-0 before crashing in the last three. "We were all
well and truly on the plane home by then," Buchanan
said. "There was nothing left."

Australia again appeared to falter at the end of last
summer, losing the one-day finals to England and a
short series in New Zealand, which boded ill for the
World Cup.

Buchanan said this was because of experiments with the
team in preparation for the cup, a heavy training
schedule, sabbaticals for key players and his
calculatedly provocative statement about how it would
be good to have some decent opposition for once. "We
never planned to lose those games," he said. "But I
wasn't worried."

Buchanan's ways were sometimes subtle. At least four
times on his watch, dossiers on opponents leaked into
the media, which notionally was embarrassing for him,
but gave rise to a suspicion that it was a coach's
ploy to keep his team on its toes.

He doesn't deny subterfuge completely. The first
instance was as coach of Queensland, before a
Sheffield Shield final in Perth. "Put it this way:
somehow our gameplan found its way out of our dressing
room and onto the back and front page of The West
Australian," he said.

"My lesson was that no matter how you try to keep
control of written documents, somehow they will get
out. So I've always thought that whatever I put in
print might get out.

"Without saying I would deliberately leak documents, I
always did have in the back of my mind that they could
get out. My experience in WA was that it did more harm
to the opposition than it did to us."

The Ashes regained, a third World Cup won, Buchanan
took his bow. Now, after seven years of up to 250
nights a year away from home, he has to adapt. "I'm
still waking up at 3am, the mind racing," he said.
"It'll take some time." He said he would miss it,
especially when the team gathers for its next
adventure later this year. In the meantime, of course,
there will be a book.