Here we go again.
Our national cricket team has failed. Fans are inconsolable. The media is baying for blood. Politicians are arguing about it. A few officials are resigning. Social media is aflame. Former cricketers are imparting wisdom. Everyone sees a different problem with various solutions. The blame game is in full swing.
High-level meetings have been held and grandiose pronouncements made. But it’s like putting sticking plaster on a snakebite. The fundamental issues will be ignored and forgotten as soon as our team starts winning a few matches.
For many fans of the game, the point of frustration was not the defeat, but the way the paid professionals play the game. Many questions are raised concerning player participation, clothing culture, and politics which often seem to neglect the real issues surrounding how sports are done on the field.
It’s a human resources problem
This is not a cricket problem. It’s a human resources (HR) problem.
Cricket is one of the interesting sports where an organisation is required to have high performance in all the various aspects of HR – talent spotting, recruitment, training, HR management, leadership skills, teambuilding, psychology and counseling, HR strategy, career succession strategy, health and fitness, and medical services. Get the picture?
Of course, there’s also public relations (PR) and communications, finance, marketing, infrastructure, logistics, ICT, transport, etc, but these are support services. It’s also a security problem, if employees (players) are taking bribes to work against the organisation’s objectives.
A systemic problem which knee-jerk reactions won’t fix
An evaluation of Sri Lanka’s current ranking shows that we are at the bottom of the cricketing world in all forms of the game. For a country that has been at the top or near the top in all three formats – Tests, ODIs, T20Is – this is simply not acceptable. Fig. 1 shows the current ranking, with rankings of the three traditionally well-performing nations.
The cumulative result of Tests, ODIs, and T20Is during this period is 44 wins and 95 losses. Sri Lanka has lost 58.28% of its matches and won 41.71%, discounting draws and no results. That’s not acceptable. As it’s also a five-year evaluation, Sri Lanka has also played a wide range of countries, as opposed to a year in which it plays a majority of traditionally weak or strong countries.
- India has an all format win percentage of 69.94% in the last four years
- England has an all format win percentage of 66.66% in the last four years
Fix the SLC management and operations in HR terms
The International Cricket Council (ICC) frowns on government-appointed administrations on the grounds that they are undemocratic. But the fact is that Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) has performed far better in all aspects during the tenures of several Interim Committees. The reason, one could argue, is that these committees were headed by distinguished private sector professionals, supported by likeminded professionals who were all doing a voluntary job for the love of the game, without hopes of massive financial benefits.
Private sector professionals are well versed in running a sports organisation as they would run their own corporate organisations, and therein lies the solution: Treat SLC and other sports bodies as corporate organisations with a focus on all the aspects of HR.
Glory days
The year 2001 was an unremarkable year. Or was it? In fact, it can be taken as an example of a glory year for Sri Lanka, although there were no major tournaments that year. In all formats, Sri Lanka won 30 and lost 19, a winning percentage of 61%. The year 2002 was similar, with the added bonus of Sri Lanka winning the Champions Trophy (co-champs with India).
Stability at the top is essential
- Considering all of the performance factors, it is quite clear that SLC is a mess, not just in short-term performance, but in long-term management. It is, of course, plagued by politics. But the fact is that cricket has been for too long dominated by people with less than desirable expertise in managing the multiple functions of an organisation
- Over the past five years, uncountable boards, captains, head coaches, players, and selection committees have served
Talent spotting
Very few Sri Lankan youngsters actually get the opportunity to play cricket due to the lack of facilities in most schools. Even less come to the eye of selectors and good coaches. Thus, the talent pool is very limited. SLC needs a better system, working together with the Schools Cricket Association to nurture talent. All selectors must watch matches to spot talent.
Recruitment
Is cricket a viable career for youngsters? SLC needs to take steps to make this a firm career choice, and put in place modern methods of recruitment to catch these youngsters.
Training
Often, once talented players are contracted by SLC, they often get overconfident and dazzled by their fame. The result is a letdown in training. But there’s no substitute for endless training. There’s no room for laziness here.
In addition, all lower formats of the sport should be used as proper training pools and geared more towards producing results at the national level – starting with schools, clubs, districts, provinces, “A” teams, etc.
HR management
HR is not a job for past cricketers. This is where you need an HR department well versed in modern HR methodologies to manage the cricketers – who are after all employees.
Leadership skills
The captain’s role can be positive and negative in maintaining the expectations of team success – others excel under pressure. The functions of the captain are daunting. Captains take part in the selection and decision-making processes (i.e. order of batting, selection of bowlers, and field placing) and decide the team strategy, including ground conditions and adjustments in bowling. The captain must be successful, able to manage various characters in the team, and able to handle the media. He must also inspire the team to obey and lead from the front. He must also maintain his own playing standards. It’s a tough job needing a lot of mental maturity.
Teambuilding
Cricket is a team sport. But spats between team members seem to happen very often, quite publicly. This is a reflection of bad discipline in the team and the organisation.
Psychology and counselling
Developing mental toughness
Cricket success is often influenced by the mood in a team. The game, particularly the international games, provides players with many mental challenges. Sports psychology is regarded as an important part of the skill growth of any athlete. Players need the highs of success and rely on these achievements. But it is crucial to allow failures or adverse circumstances to arise with minimal adverse impact. They must not lose sight of the game’s objectives.
Studies in various sports have shown that the average of happy moods of teammates and players’ own moods and results are important associations. In addition, the moods of senior players affect the team more. Coaches, players, and sport psychologists must create an open and transparent team atmosphere in which players can share their personal success stories, trust, and values in order to promote positive emotional responses and improve resilience.
The use of rational emotive behaviour therapy (REBT) in sports is growing by which sports psychologists help sportsmen remove unhealthy perception and emotion. REBT refers to “unhealthy emotions” linked to pain and discomfort which contribute to self-defeating conduct and prevent sportsmen from achieving their aims. The term “healthy emotions” refers to emotions that do not deter players, but encourage them to take a proactive view of the situation and take steps to help them achieve their objectives.
Focus and self-confidence
There are enormous number of distractions in the world of sports, e.g., media, spectators, opposition, social media. Opponents will “sledge” to provoke emotional failure. Social media will pressurise players. Spectators will hurl verbal abuse (this is now banned in most countries). Journalists will criticise. To retain concentration, discipline, and routines are vital. Rules must be followed for conduct of players. Routines include simple things such as ensuring that the batsman tests his gloves or taps his bat at the crease, the bowler spins the ball from one hand to another or turns the same way at the end of their delivery, and the wicketkeeper checks his gloves in a certain order before crouching. Routines are vital for focusing or refocusing.
Psychological and emotional abilities of cricketers are essential for success due to the many uncontrollable variables such as playing conditions, random decisions, etc. If a batsman is on the field, his effectiveness will vary from situation to situation, as he faces different bowlers, playing conditions, and situation of the game. Knowledge of how self-efficacy is affected and their key sources of automatic information are important players. They need to build strategies for self-performance control over a game, the Test series, and league that they play.
The evaluation of implicit effectiveness was also shown to affect those thinking habits (i.e. goals, fears, causation) and emotional responses that influence motivation (i.e. pride, guilt, satisfaction, sorrow). People who work hard on themselves are typically more persistent and attain higher levels, over and above people who have doubts about their own skills. Self-modelling in cricket can enable a player to capture their own performances in practice or competition. Players and coaches should use recording technologies to perfect their techniques in batting, fielding, and bowling at a young age.
Succession planning
- Sri Lanka is known for continuously turning random players around. They did not keep a number of players of various formats. The loss of a player means he is automatically substituted, without a second opportunity. Others fail over long periods but are kept on.
- The biggest reason for failure is a lack of fitness, which can lead to not having enough fast bowlers, and also bad fielding that can cost the match.
- Compare and contrast – we’ve been the best before. What did we do right? From 1996 for almost a decade, Sri Lanka showed consistency in performance and was at the top of the cricketing world. There were dips, of course, but they were fixable within the system. Examine the system at that time
- Evaluate competitor systems – what are India, England, and Australia doing that consistently keep them at the top of the sport?
- Overhaul SLC with a focus on HR – bring in proper HR professionals and other professionals
- Drop the culture of believing that you need to have played cricket to work at Sri Lanka Cricket. This is a management problem, not a cricket problem
- Physical fitness – ensure half the team isn’t injured
- Build discipline in fielding – catches win matches. Enough said
- Mental toughness – batsmen need mental toughness to stand there unmoved without panicking while wickets are falling at the other end
- Selectors must be given proper remuneration and it should be made mandatory for them to be limited to this job only. Selectors must watch matches at the schools, club, district, and provincial levels to gauge techniques of young players
- Wipeout corruption – if players see corrupt administrators, then players too will become corrupt. That’s just not cricket