[CTQ Smartcast] Lessons from the Indian Cricket Team on Transformation and Future Relevance, With Sumeet Pai
Sumeet Pai is currently serving as Vice President (Sales) at streamingo.ai. He has previously served the Indian Cricket Team in the capacity of a Computer Analyst between 2001 and 2004. He oversaw the massive transformation that the cricket team underwent. Sumeet was a change agent who, through the value of data, helped cricket legends to improve their game.
This Smartcast, hosted by CTQ co-founder BV Harish Kumar, is a great opportunity to witness the stories of transformation and change which can help one in staying future relevant.
Prefer an audio version of the Smartcast? Listen below.
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(Read the shownotes below or skip to the transcript)
SOME OF THE THINGS WE SPOKE ABOUT
How to adapt to big changes and the role of change management
What can we learn from the habits and routines of sportspersons
Why must one be ready to adapt to changes?
The future-relevance of sports analytics
The future-relevance of AI in the media and entertainment industry
PLUS
Sumeet Pai’s role as an analyst working with the Indian Cricket team
AND
His experience of working with the legends of Indian cricket
LINK TO SUMEET PAI’S BLOG
If you enjoyed this Smartcast, you will also like A Finance Professional's Habit-Starter Formula, with Sumeet Pai
TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
00:00:00
Harish Kumar: In this CTQ Smartcast, we revisit an important period in the history of Indian cricket to do some meta-thinking about future relevance. Sumeet Pai was the computer analyst with the Indian cricket team in 2002 when people like Jagmohan Dalmia, John Wright, and Sourav Ganguly were overseeing a massive change in the Indian cricket team. You had senior players like Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Anil Kumble, Javagal Srinath, and VVS Laxman. It was also the time when younger players like Yuvraj Singh, Virendra Sehwag, Mohammed Kaif, and Harbhajan Singh were making their presence felt and trying to cement their places. The team itself was coming out of some bad times of all the controversies of the previous years. From a corporate lens, this had all the ingredients of a massive business transformation story and given how much the team has progressed since those days, it was a great transformation indeed. At the centre of all that, was this young man Sumeet, who was barely 1-1.5 years into his first job and was given the responsibility to be the change agent. He had to gain the confidence of these players, legends of Indian cricket, and show the value of data to help them improve their game. Along the way, he did many odd jobs of fixing internet accounts of not just Indian players but players like Brian Lara to bowling in the nets. So if you follow Indian cricket or are interested in stories of transformation and change, or are just curious about sports analytics, you’ll find this conversation immensely useful. Remember to subscribe to our show on whatever platform you are getting this on. That way you’ll get notified when we publish a new episode and we do have many interesting guests lined up for you.
00:02:09
Harish: Hi Sumeet, welcome to the CTQ Smartcast.
00:02:14
Sumeet: Hey Harish. Good to see you. Thanks a lot for inviting me.
00:02:17
Harish: Yeah. So we are doing the second recording with you. We’ve already spoken about your habits. But this is very interesting. Personally, it is very intriguing as well, because we want to visit a period in Indian cricket history to do some meta-thinking about future relevance. Without revealing too much about what we are going to talk about. Sumeet, I just want you to talk about what was your role with the Indian cricket team back in 2002, how did it come about? Just talk us through that.
00:02:52
Sumeet: The role was that of a computer analyst primarily. There was this new wave of transformation that occurred in Indian cricket with the arrival of John Wright, India’s first foreign coach. You might also recall that Indian cricket was emerging from a dark phase with a lot of scandals around 1999-2000, where a lot of skeletons came out and people had lost a lot of interest in cricket. There was this yearning for change that was developing within the BCCI. With the arrival of John, a lot of aspects got introduced in Indian cricket. Firstly, a sense of professionalism, a lot of focus on physical fitness, preparation style, and of course, technology. The background that I understand is that teams like South Africa and Australia were using computers for performance analysis. Even now, if you and see the videos of the cricket played then, you’ll see a person sitting with a laptop next to Bob Woolmer and John Buchanan. I’m told that Javagal Srinath, who has a techie background himself, was interested to go check out. He was this person if he sees something interesting around, he would barge in and ask openly as to what is this all about. There he saw this computer being used for recording the games and being used for performance analysis. Then he prevailed upon the BCCI to develop something like this for Indian cricket. John being the coach was very supportive, he was trying to push through a lot of initiatives and this was one of them. I understand that it finally went up to the desk of AC Muthaiah who was the BCCI Chief then and then Jagmohan Dalmia who became the chief, and he had the year of Sourav Ganguly, the captain. A proposal was shared with the BCCI and what Srinath offered was that he could develop this software through a team, an IT company which was in Bangalore, which he was familiar with. Finally, Mr. Dalmia said fine, you could proceed but we are not sure about this. There was a lot of skepticism I’m told and even the payment was not assured in the beginning. Anyway, this was 2001. So the software development started for this tool, and that was around the time I had finished my engineering and I had joined as a developer in this company, Phoenix Global Solutions which was acquired by Tata Consultancy Services in 2004. It was a small-sized IT company in Bangalore and they stepped forward to develop this tool which was the first of its kind for Indian cricket. How did I get in here? I was fresh out of college, still, this momentum of doing extra-curricular after college was there and we were part of newsletters within the company and then there was this opportunity to do an event which was planned for in Bangalore. I suggested we could do a quiz, the head of marketing and all that, he was in charge of this. She came and asked me to explain the modalities and I don’t know, the experience had helped I guess, so I suggested prelims and a finals event for the entire company. Finally, I did a quiz on the rooftop of the company and that went really well. Now, what’s the connection between this and the role? Because the original idea of this company was just to develop the software and train somebody from the Karnataka Cricket KCA and send that person. Basically, there was no idea to send somebody from the company or one of our staff. But what had happened was when this first person who was actually sent, faced a lot of problems on multiple fronts. There was a problem with the hardware, software and most importantly he was unable to get the players around to come and have a look. Obviously, with the problems being with the computer, he was not able to solve most of them. The initial time was spent in getting the tool right, fixing the issues that cropped up, which were slowly getting resolved and were stabilizing. The third point was that you needed to get the players on board to see this analysis and then prove to the BCCI that this is indeed useful. Because remember what I said that the payment was also not assured by Mr. Dalmia and there was a lot of skepticism in the fraternity. Somebody in the company thought that this guy looks like a potential candidate. We could send him, he’s of the same age group and from what he saw, he’ll perhaps get along with the players. That was exactly the thought and I got called for a meeting. Javagal Srinath interviewed me and his first question was why are you not on the Phoenix cricket team? I was stumped by that because I was not part of the cricket team, I was playing football, that was my sporting introduction.
00:08:17
Harish: The first dismissal that Srinath had which was stumped out, is it?
00:08:20
Sumeet: Yeah, you can say that. But there was an entire flow that happened. Somehow I happened to be there at the right place. I was trained for about a month and I was sent and I was with the team for about 1.5 years. Absolutely, a fortunate series of events I would say.
00:08:40
Harish: Yeah. As you said, right time, right place but obviously all your other interests led to that. It was a lot of input from your side as well which ensured that you were doing the right thing at the right place at the right time. So Sumeet, you mentioned quizzing and we know you love your quizzing. So we are going to ask a couple of quiz questions at least throughout the entire conversation. I’m going to ask you the first question which is quite an easy one for you but I’m going to ask you this anyway. Which is the longest-running sports annual in history?
00:09:16
Sumeet: Longest running sports event, you mean?
00:09:18
Harish: Sports annual. It’s like a publication.
00:09:24
Sumeet: Oh, you said it’s an easy one, is it? I’m going to embarrass myself with all this now.
00:09:30
Harish: It’s right down your alley.
00:09:32
Sumeet: Is it Wisden Cricket?
00:09:34
Harish: It is. It is Cricketers’ Almanac Wisden, which was founded in 1864. The reason why I ask this question, Sumeet, was that before computer analysis came in, maybe stats were all about Wisden's Almanack. I still remember my father’s collection where he had the Cricketers’ Almanack from ‘67 and ‘68. While I was growing up I used to just read all of that. For fans at least, trivia related to facts was just these things. Cricket lends itself to a lot of statistical analysis because of its discrete nature. You have so many balls and so many numbers involved in cricket. So theoretically it does lend itself. But the software aspect is where you come in. So when you went in, how was the experience around? As you said, you were of the same age group so you could talk to them but they were also legends by then. Sachin Tendulkar had already completed 12 years by then, he was already the greatest cricketer. How did you deal with these people?
00:10:58
Sumeet: It was truly an amazing experience I would say. Hugely enjoyable to be amongst the top cricketers. Quickly I realized my job had two aspects to it. One was to record the entire game and the second was to retrieve it well. If I just got these two activities well, then everything fell into place. Nothing else mattered. Because my role was that of using the computer to make it available at any time. Being with the players was an eye-opener. I initially had some premonitions and all sorts of perceptions about how they would be. But I think looking back at it now, it was a wave of transformation. With John coming in there was a sense of innovation which was there around the team and everybody came on board. Around 2001-2002 there was this healthy construct to the team. It was a good mix of people with experience. You can say, Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, VVS Laxman, Anil Kumble, Javagal Srinath who had spent a considerable amount of time being part of Indian cricket and they had not used video analysis before that. There was this new wave, a crop of players, Harbhajan Singh, Yuvraj, Sehwag, Ashish Nehra, Zaheer Khan, Mohammed Kaif, who were coming into the team. I would say that the team was like a healthy mix. But by the end of it, there was this nice culture to be open to new things. I was just one of the aspects because there was, apart from me, a physical trainer which was like a new introduction to Indian cricket, who focussed on the diet, physical fitness which was never done before. That person came on board after I did. When I came on board I could see absolutely no inhibitions on ordering anything that you wanted to when you went to restaurants or ordering room service. But when this person came on board, there was a consistent thought within the team that they should be focussing on their diet. What I saw being part of the support organization, there was this healthy respect from everybody. During the time that I spent, I could see different people opening up at different junctures. That gave me an idea of how they prepared, what they had in mind as far as their performance is considered. Overall a very enjoyable experience. Conversations were very healthy and the atmosphere too. I can’t recall any incident of any kind where I felt weird or left out, in fact, more positive stories than anything else.
00:13:58
Harish: That’s fantastic. Sumeet, I loved the fact that you termed it a transformation. You used words like innovation, transformation, culture - these are the words that you would normally associate with a corporate entity. That’s great, probably because you were also not from a sporting background, and after that, you spent all your life in the corporate world, so you can look at the time through that lens. That is also something we wanted to focus on. When you talk about something like computer analysis coming into Indian cricket, it was new and a big change. So how did people adopt technology, restrictions around diet? What did you do to help them adapt accordingly? How did you make the change easy for them?
00:14:54
Sumeet: Let me demystify the role a bit. Before the computer, if any player wanted to see how they performed in the day, they had to get hold of video cassettes and put it on a VCR. That cassette would be available to them from the broadcasting agencies or other sources or keep watching on television. Now imagine that was the scene then and if you wanted to watch there was no medium, there is so much travel in international cricket, it is next to impossible to have a look. With the computer, it became available to them 24/7. What it ensured was, going back to the operational part, I had to sit in front of the computer, there was an interface which I had to start recording at the time of delivery and end after the ball was dealt. In that space when the ball is delivered, suppose runs are made or any outcome that happens, I could key in 5-6 attributes. For example, the initial preset, this is the batsman and this is the bowler and let’s say Sachin is batting against Allan Donald, there is a cover drive for a 4, I could with 4-5 clicks, I could select, click and draw on the field where the ball went, select the number of runs and save it. For the one-day match, I could dave about 600 deliveries with each delivery having 5-6 attributes to it. The whole idea was to keep watching, look at your screen, and 5-6 clicks to save. What would happen as a result is, in the laptop. You could say it’s a laptop but it was like a customized trunk for discussion purposes let’s call it a laptop. The laptop or the computer had this database which could save all these deliveries and as a video you could see all of the deliveries, but another tool would help us retrieve whatever we wanted to see. At the end of the day, let’s say Sachin could come and ask me to show all the bouncers he played today. So I go select batsman as Sachin and the type of ball is a bouncer and fetch, so in a very clean interface, it would fetch all those deliveries one by one which were bouncers. Now he could see whether his footwork was right, what was doing differently through the deliveries. Suppose he hit six of them for boundaries or played well and the seventh one, while there was a miscued shot and he got out, he could actually see on that delivery, perhaps his footwork was not right or his hand movement was not appropriate or so. That he could see over a sequence, is just a very small example. Now imagine the different permutations and combinations that we could do. The retrieval was as important as the recording. I had recorded it well, it would fetch that video. There was this intelligence which was introduced and it was like an innovation which helped in the transformation of the team, how they prepared, how they could view their performances, as well as to check for the opposition. Regarding the adoption, it was just a matter of time. They were zapped by it initially, they thought it was just like a video recording. It was a small enhancement over a video cassette. But you could tokenize it as deliveries, we could check different aspects of the game. So slowly everybody warmed up, the more time we spent with each other. I also tried to be useful to the team in different ways. Slowly there was a bonding, friendship that developed, and as a result the utilization of the tool also went up.
00:19:00
Harish: So any memorable anecdotes that you can narrate where people were like “Wow, I never knew this, thanks for showing me how I play, how somebody got me.” Anything like that?
00:19:15
Harish: Yeah, many incidents. One of the funniest incidents which I have mentioned to some of my friends happened in England. This was during the Test series. Around 11:30 in the night, I got a knock on the door and I was surprised. Typically players would come to watch their games, there was a set pattern, some would come immediately after the game, some would come before the game. Dada, John, and all would see before the match to do a team meeting. But a knock on the door at 11:30 in the night was absolutely surprising. I peeped through my keyhole and saw that Sourav Ganguly and Geoffrey Boycott were there. Then I opened the door and Dada was profusely apologizing saying sorry to wake you up if you were sleeping but can you please put it on the computer. I was wondering as to what he wanted to see? Geoffrey Boycott has just stormed in as if what took me so long to open the door. They came in and wanted to see some portion of the day which I had recorded. I could see some conversation continuing. What Geoffrey was trying to tell Dada is that his footwork is wrong and he was saying look how Rahul and Sachin are playing. They are getting their footwork right, that’s how they were able to score some runs whereas Sourav was getting out to some similar balls. Within 15-20 mins of video retrieval, Dada was able to see it, his hands were on his head like oh no. This is what it is. I can’t show it on video but there was a part of the footwork he was doing wrong. We could see how Rahul and Sachin were playing those deliveries and Geoffrey Boycott helped him understand that. He just went off like “This is what I told you, Sourav.” That was like one of the incidents, there were many like this.
00:21:15
Harish: Right, yeah. What I take from this Sumeet, is that it is so easy for us who are watching to have that third person’s view on how things are going. A lot of fans take pride in this and it probably comes from the fact that they probably have been doing this analysis or we think they’ve been doing it. But it is very difficult for a person who has been in the thick of it. When you’ve been doing this, you can’t see it from a third person’s view, which is what would have happened with the commentators. That’s where Boycott had this view on how Ganguly was playing. Do you have any idea how people would do this before this kind of analysis came in? What was their reaction to this? Like you said, Ganguly going oh what am I doing? Did they feel why we didn't have this before? Why have we got this so late? Was that a reaction people had?
00:22:54
Sumeet: Absolutely. Very true, the incident that you mentioned. To surmise, you made that prediction that he was going to score big, it was not out of the ordinary, right? I’m sure there are hours and hours of cricket that you’ve watched and you have come to the conclusion that I can see something going right. He’s in the flow, in the zone and a big score is coming. As far as the players were concerned, I’m sure each one of them had their sense of performance, how they went about their daily fieldwork whether it’s batting, bowling or fielding. But having a video from which they could see themselves, was a major eye-opener. Like I said everybody had a different pattern and they would prepare. For example, Anil Kumble would immediately after coming out of the field, he would come to sit next to me, and ask me to show him all the overs that he bowled. He would watch it almost immediately even before going to the dressing room. Then some players would go to the dressing room, change, go to the hotel, have dinner, and at 10 o’clock they would come over to see their performances. They had a pattern as to when they would want to see their performances. I’m sure everybody felt like they wished they had something like this before. Azharuddin, an ex-cricketer who I happened to meet once, commented that why didn’t you come earlier? Like I said, videos and VCRs and all of that were hugely cumbersome and many cases impossible. I think they would never get a chance to see their performance. So what happened as part of this transformation is that there was a set schedule, you had everybody into the gym at 6 pm, team dinner at 8 pm, and retire at 9 pm. Then at 6 am for a jog, there was a scheduled lifestyle that was ingrained in all the players. Whatever little me-time they had, they would come and watch themselves. This is apart from the team meetings that we did and they were also very interesting where anybody could ask any question, and then thanks to the computer being available there, they could retrieve any part of the team’s performance or if you were talking about some opposition player, we could retrieve it, pause and have a team discussion about it. I think overall everybody realized that they had to watch how they played to make some sort of a judgement about how they should be doing in the times to come.
00:25:55
Harish: So this also brings me to the point about reflection at work. Even within a corporate environment a lot of times, people are into the zone. They are doing everything and don’t pause to reflect upon how things have been going. Learn from both on how things are going well and where they could have done better. Companies that do well seem to be taking out their time to reflect upon how things are going. So if you were to again use the word reflection, if you were to reflect on those times with the knowledge of what you’ve been doing in the corporate side of things for the last 8-10 years. How would you contrast that in terms of the importance of reflection? Was that an eye-opener for you as well, that this is how things are getting better, and do you see that happening in the corporate world?
00:26:53
Sumeet: Yeah, I would think so. It is important to reflect and have that cycle of feedback as well. So this tool and through my experience what I felt was it gave them an opportunity for self-reflection. You didn’t have anybody to tell you that this is where you did well or did wrongly. Now there was this one introduction I was happy to do along with John, that during a tour abroad, what we introduced was some sort of an individual score chart. Now what that meant was, it’s a small report card. I remember it was like a fun experience that we created an individual; scorecard for each player. So for example, how many dot balls they bowled as a bowler, how many runs, fours, sixes, like some stats were there. Their lifestyle was so mechanical, they did not know, there was a flow which inhibited you from knowing a few things. Individual scorecards helped them understand how they performed. Suppose there was a misfielding, there were runs saved. John was very particular about it which I would think was largely ignored, like how many runs did you save on the field. So that was one area where nobody paid attention to, so that started getting reflected in the individual scorecard that you saved two runs. If you saw over an entire performance, the entire team has saved about 30-35 runs. Now in a one-day scenario, you can imagine the value of those runs. You could say that someone had given 7 runs through misfielding and that person would be feeling great that okay I score 65 but why am I still ridiculed about it? Because there was this aspect that you are not just for individual performance. There are different parts to your performance that are important and contribute to the team winning or losing. This was something that John and I developed for a scorecard. I remember giving it to players and Rahul, he was once annoyed that I had marked -5 runs for him, he had misfielded. He was surprised that nobody had had the gumption to suggest something like this on a written paper and it flashed on the screen also. All this helped them look at their performances and become more aware that each one had to contribute now, not just in the one department, you had to in all the three - batting, bowling, and fielding. Even if you are not bowling or if you didn’t have the chance to bat, you were selected for all three, so it gave them a chance to reflect and help them prepare well.
00:29:55
Harish: Yeah, like the whole OKR system in companies, the objective, key, results give you a very objective analysis of how you or your team is doing. There is no confusion around that. Nobody can say no we are doing great but this is what the stats show and your results show. The data view of things. One question for you Sumeet, if you were to reflect on those days, do you think you could have done anything else to make the whole adoption easier or faster for the team or say any specific individuals?
00:30:35
Sumeet: If you asked me this question any other time or a different time, I would say yeah, I would want to do this differently or I wish something else was better and all that. If I reflect, I’m quite certain that I did my best here. Primarily the computer and the usage of the tool were smoothed out. The recording and retrieval happened well. The entire role was to be available 24/7. One of the key aspects which don’t get any coverage was the team meetings. This was where the computer’s role was most prominent. That was a time where I had to come up with some presentations as part of preparations for the next game. John would give me some inputs from the phone that make a presentation with this, this, this. Sometimes he would write it on a piece of paper and slide it through the door. Initially, John felt that this is perhaps something which I had to handhold but he became confident that once I had given the inputs, the presentation was ready, about 7-8 slides and that’s where my corporate experience helped perhaps, little bit whatever I had before joining the team of creating presentations and communicating the aspects well. That built on over a period of time and I’m sure that’s something the players appreciated because while we were focusing on the negatives, we were primarily focusing on the positives because to keep the mood of the team quite motivated. Even if somebody didn’t do well, there were some aspects that perhaps John also hadn’t noticed like running between the wickets, so I would do a lot of things he mentioned in the previous meetings to see if there was a recurrence of that pattern in the coming days like partnerships, runs saved and if I could present it again, so the team felt happy about it.
00:32:41
Harish: Yeah. While reading your blogs, we are going to link to all your blogs in the show notes anyways. Maybe not deliberately but inadvertently you got those players to have more confidence in you by solving basic IT issues like setting up their laptop for the internet etc. Any memorable incidents from that part that helped make the whole transition smooth for them and you?
00:33:13
Sumeet: Yes. What I noticed was that the Indian team was Team A when it was in India and when it was abroad, it was Team B. What I mean is two completely different sets of teams. In India, given that there were so many people who would constantly keep meeting us and they hardly had time to bond with each other. They would be constantly meeting friends and family, press and everything. When we went abroad, we were on our own and we had to rely on each other for our basic needs. I was trying to be useful to the team players in different ways and one of the most important was setting up the internet accounts. It was not as easy as now we have WiFi connectivity established. We had to activate it and it was a wired connection, we had to remove the wire from the telephone and put it into the laptop. That was my job which I used to do for all the players, setting up the internet so they could connect with their families, friends wherever. One of the first incidents that happened on my first tour abroad was when opposition players started asking me for internet connections. Nobody lesser than Brian Lara. Lara is a good friend of Sachin and Sachin used to always prod me like come set my internet connection. He told Lara that he can do it for your players. In his country, his domain, Lara would call me and ask me to set up the internet in his room. Being a computer analyst or computer boy, anything technology they would throw at me. If they got a digital camera, they would ask me how to use it. They would get a lot of gifts like MD, CD players. Switch on some new software, anything technology they would ask me and I would be more than willing to help them out.
00:35:23
Harish: Yeah, that’s fantastic. Thanks for these anecdotes. There are a lot more interesting anecdotes that you’ve written about so we are going to link to them in the show notes. But before we move to the next section, another quiz question. Sachin Tendulkar famously never passed 30 in ODIs at Lords and 37 in Test matches. He did score 125 but that doesn’t go on the honours board because it was in the Princess Diana Memorial match. Another Indian batsman never scored a Test 100 but his name is on the batting honour board at Lords. Who is this batsman that I’m talking about?
00:36:04
Sumeet: I know Ajit Agarkar’s name is on the board.
00:36:07
Harish: Yeah but that’s because he scored a Test 100. This person didn’t score a Test 100, another famous Indian batsman, I don’t want to add more adjectives to it.
00:36:19
Sumeet: Okay. I wouldn’t know this.
00:36:23
Harish: Another batting legend, let me just qualify that from India.
00:36:27
Sumeet: Is it Rahul Dravid himself?
00:36:30
Harish: No, not Dravid. I think Dravid got it in the 2011-12 tour. He did get a 100 then.
00:36:38
Sumeet: Not for the batting, is it?
00:36:39
Harish: No, this is for batting, but it is not a Test 100. That’s the interesting part.
00:36:45
Sumeet: Okay I wouldn’t know this.
00:36:46
Harish: So this is Sunil Gavaskar who also had a high score of about 59 but he played the rest of the world vs MCC in 1988 when he scored 188 and he was dismissed by Ravi Shashtri. But because it was for the bi-centenary of the MCC, they considered it as part of the honours. So Gavaskar’s name is on the honours board though he has never got a Test 100 at Lords. Two of our greatest batsmen don’t have a Test 100 at Lords. The question that I wanted to ask you about was that these are the kind of stats and figures people are used to. Whether they got a 100 or not, maybe who got them out. Players like Tendulkar and Glenn McGrath are known for remembering everything. You talked about this but what was the new information that these people were asking for that you could provide, which could give them that confidence that this is what I’ve been missing in my game. Like you talked about the footwork while playing a bouncer. So what was this new information that people were looking for and where did you get challenged as well that this is the intelligence they are looking for and I’ve to step up on my game in tokenization to help them get this intelligence?
00:38:29
Sumeet: Two aspects to it, one is on the team preparation and the other is on the individual preparation. The team preparation like I mentioned was all on the cumulative runs saved, runs given, run-outs or so, which as a team you could pass information, and the entire team had to note that as a mandate. That’s something that John would keep looking out for, make a mention of it. New information like catches dropped and all that. If you recall, Indian cricket had a humongous change in terms of fielding. If you see in the late 90s, if there is someone on the boundary and the ball is coming, they would invariably know that it would go for 4 runs. But you could see in early 2001-02 where each player pushed themselves very hard to save even one run, diving, etc. Players like Kaif and Yuvraj had no fear of death. They would dive and save. That would motivate the rest of the team. Even players like VVS who had famously never dived even indulged in that. There was this team aspect to it, that information started coming. When you start projecting it that you did well as a team and something else you didn’t do well as a team, without calling out individual people. That was something that got ingrained as new knowledge and new information and something that they aspired for. It helped them to work on their fitness, diet. So it was all connected. Video helped them understand and they knew that if they had to improve, they had to get fit and improve their BMI, etc. On an individual level also apart from the footwork misses, there were small things. I remember telling this insight to Harbhajan that it is very important that he plays his first delivery well. Wherever he had an uncomfortable first delivery he didn’t play well at all. If he played a shot confidently then it would help him to do well even those 10-15 runs. You don’t expect Harbhajan to score big but things like that. Even when you came to runs against spinners or fast bowlers, all of them. Some new information was coming all the time and the sky was the limit. You could pause and focus on different aspects of the game even while preparing for the opposition like which field setting to set. Since you asked me a new thing, while this tool was one for recording and the other for retrieval, we also developed a tool through the course which is for field management. The players were constantly giving me input about the field settings. So I relayed this information back to my IT team in Bangalore. They developed a field management tool. Suppose we know that we are playing against the West Indies. Brian Lara is very strong on the offside and most of the runs he scores in a particular section of the ground. What field setting do we set for him? Do we keep a slip and let’s say he got out multiple times on a short pitch delivery and the ball being caught at third man. You could save that field setting and you could take a print of it. One funny incident I recall is, we could save a lot of these field settings for different players and I would take printouts and give them to Dada. In one of the matches, he had taken a printout in his pocket and had gone to the field also. He was absolutely funny and irreverent that way. In today’s world, the analysis has gone to another level I’m sure. I haven’t had a chance to have a look. I saw it in 2010, it was very developed. From the time of using a trunk type of a computer to a laptop, now the computing resources are much more superior. It’s much advanced but those were the initial days and the fundamentals were absolutely in place.
00:44:55
Harish: Two incidents came to mind, Sumeet when you were talking about this. One was the famous ‘98 India Australia series, in which Tendulkar famously had Shivaram Krishnan bowl in the rough to counter Shane Warne’s bowling round the wicket.
00:43:!5
Sumeet: That was Sharjah right? Preparation for Sharjah?
00:43:18
Harish: No, it was for the series before that, when Australia came to India before that, apparently he was doing these things. Some players would have had this kind of analysis, the mind that this is how I need to prepare for it and do these kinds of special projects. Going to Chennai, telling him to bowl in the rough, digging up the part outside your crease, and getting this done. The other part is that you probably go in with some gut feeling of the opponents that this is what Shane Warne will do, he is known for doing something like this. Any incidents around how people did these special preparations as you talked about Lara. anything else which turned out positively as planned? Any incidents that you remember?
00:44:08
Sumeet: A lot of the preparation that happens, that’s one area that seldom gets coverage. Naturally, we switch on our TVs and the match begins and finishes and then we pass some of our comments. But that’s where the coach would come into the picture. They would constantly prepare against the opposition especially. For example, let’s say we were going against Australia, Shane Warne, and the team. So we would want bowlers like Shane Warne to come to the nets. The cricket associations would play a role in what kinds of bowlers were available. Even England would give us some rookie bowlers for net practice and not the real ones. Even the net practice would happen on different days. When it happened on the same day, they would be practicing differently and you would see a different set of players. We would see John constantly ask for some bowlers from here and there. We would be under a lot of tension. We did not get the right deal type of thing. What happened was that Indian cricket was forced to improvise and do things differently. Apart from keeping the videos intact, continuing with the recording, and being available to the players, I also had the privilege of bowling in the nets. Two incidents I recall, one with Rahul Dravid in the West Indies. We knew that the opposition had a lot of bowlers who were seamers famous for their bouncers. We also came to know that pitches were being made to favour those conditions. Rahul being the consummate disciplinarian and somebody who prepared well. If there was a person who prepared well if you ask me, it was Dravid. He gave me a set of plastic balls and asked me to bowl on a concrete setup. While the whole team went out to practice in the nets, he asked me to bowl in a particular area. That was his preparation. I think he also knew that, okay, give it to somebody with no prior experience and he just wanted things to go his way. That was one type of how they were preparing differently. Sachin in Sri Lanka, asked me to bowl off-spin to prepare against Murali because you had to trust somebody. You could ask your bowlers to bowl in a particular way or you could ask the net practice bowlers. But there were some instances where I inadvertently played a role in helping them prepare in the nets. Completely different from technology but as an integral part of the team, that was another chance for me to be useful to the team.
00:47:29
Harish: So when you look back, what can we learn about change management from your stint with the Indian cricket team?
00:47:37
Sumeet: Primarily, I would think that it is something that has had its time, then things fall in place. Like I mentioned that there was a time where the cricket team got their first foreign coach and with him came a lot of transformative things. It was very different and new to all these players. The first thing is this sense of professionalism and having no hierarchy. John treated everybody equally, there was absolutely no favour for anyone. Even if you performed well, you would just get a pat on the back but what lies ahead is the most important thing. What’s gone is the past. He coming on board and this combination he had with Ganguly, somewhere this executive bind that we all know of, that happened. There was the backing of Mr Dalmia also to his methods. What strikes me even now is that those aspects fell in place. This entire thing about, you have to be physically fit, watch your diet, to be available for selection, it didn’t matter who you were, what title or great things you did for Indian cricket in the past. Physical fitness, technology, and all aspects were given equal importance. There’s one incident that I can recall which opened my eyes and made up for a lot of laughter. This was in the West Indies when we were playing a Test match and it seems John got a call late in the night by one Indian fan saying that he has something exciting to say and you should be ashamed of it or you’ll be upset about it. He says one of your players is hanging out in the restaurant at 10 pm, he was there till 11:30 or so. Then John replied to him saying I’m not upset about my player being out so late, I’m upset that you woke me up in the middle of the night to tell me this. That incident got relayed to the entire team and they understood that it didn’t matter what you did outside the field. Sleep early, sleep late, go out. But as long as you meet the team diktats and are available at 6 am, meet the parameters of the team. This entire aspect of professionalism was introduced as part of it. There was this healthy construct, there was less favoritism, Dada being Dada was approachable. Anybody could say anything to him without any fear of not being selected. That was one of the greatnesses of Dada, that you could tell him something he did wrong in terms of anything with the previous match or so, he would take it calmly, not take it to heart or personally about not selecting that persona for any sort of feedback.
00:50:46
Harish: So we talk about change management at great teams, we are talking about great leadership and executive bind, doing the small things right. Creating the right kind of culture, safe space for you to open up is what made the difference in the early 2000s with the team. As complete outsiders, we could see the team gelling. I’m sure you would have had a much closer look at the whole thing. Personally for you Sumeet, you were also a fan who was seeing things from outside till 2001-02. Was there a challenge for you to stop yourself from making some comments? At what point do you stop, right? You were asked to get some data, do you add your analysis as well to it? How was that experience for you personally?
00:51:42
Sumeet: Yeah, so when I took up the role, I was given a strict mandate that you should not open your mouth about anything. You just have to do those two things right. Let the video do the talking and you show the visuals, let the players or the team decide for themselves what they have to do. Now, that’s something which I followed all the time. You can’t expect me to give comments on the legend of Indian cricket. The team that was in 2001-02 went on to play for 6-7 years beyond that too. The majority of the team continued to be part of Indian cricket, they were very well established and they became very famous and did well. There was no opportunity for me to tell this but yeah I would pass some comments here and there during the one-on-one scenario. It was a challenge for me to lead them to a particular point that I wanted them to understand. Through visuals, they would understand better. That’s something I would have done, I don’t recall making any comments but I was telling them about whatever notes I made to make such judgements. I told you about the Harbhajan incident and others. There was one incident at the NatWest night when the NatWest trophy happened. It was completely berserk and I had a nightmarish time with the computers not coming on. The video was not coming on before the NatWest Trophy final. You know which one I’m talking about, the one where Dada took off his shirt. I was in a completely tense situation and when the match happened, the computer came on, and then we got hammered badly. We had to chase 325, there was this one time where Kaif and Yuvi were playing well. We just had 55-60 runs to get. They got the team to that situation after a brilliant set of batting by both of them. Getting the ball and running between the wickets. At that juncture, we just had to get a run a ball, 52 balls 55 runs to win, or something like that. I don’t know what happened, I just blurted out that can we pass this message to them to take it slow and not go for the rash shots? I said that to Rahul who was sitting behind me and Dada was sitting outside. Rahul patted on my back and said don’t worry pal, they know what they are doing. That was one instance where I can recall where I went beyond the mandate and I spoke out. But what mattered was coming back to the normal and sticking to your role. That’s what happened.
00:54:59
Harish: That’s very important to do that. I’m sure you did a fantastic job but if you were to think about that time, look at different people you met, how Rahul Dravid was the consummate professional and he would do great amounts of preparation before a match. So any interesting habits and routines of sportspeople that you watched and we could all learn from?
00:55:24
Sumeet: Absolutely. The first name I should take is Sourav Ganguly. Whatever is said about him, one thing I realized is that the public goes by perceptions. Even what the media dish out doesn’t help. One thing that I realized quickly is that and which we can do as an exercise now, if you open any newspaper and open the sports page, just read the headlines and the news articles. You’ll see that the write-ups are always about the cricketers, it’s about the individuals. Like there will be a headline whether India won, the headline will be Dada scores a century or VVS Laxman turns things around. There is this aspect which all of us somehow miss that a lot of things are about the Indian cricketers. People say I love Indian cricket, actually what they are trying to say is they love some cricketer, they look up to a cricketer. Even 50% of the population, if you speak to them about cricket, they’ll invariably talk about cricketers. There was this entire aspect of this perception that was created about people. And what I could see, being with them, was that they were quite the opposite. Dada, for example, was known as very arrogant but that was like a misconception. He’s one of the sweetest people I can think of, very approachable, cool-headed and I don’t know if that habit or routine we can pick up from him that his room door was always open. Till he’s sleeping, his room door was always open, anybody could walk in or walk out. You had to be special to have that attribute to yourself. With so much information coming to you, still being cool, and having a smile on your face, that was something one can learn from Dada. Sachin like God had already achieved so much in cricket, there were hopes of a billion people and still being cool and being attached to your craft, focussing on things that made him happy, which calmed him like music. At times you could see him go inside and you would hear loud music playing in his room. Dravid for being disciplined about his food habits. Many times during the matches, he would walk into the kitchen of the hotel and he would come out with some mixer or some juice. All of us were wondering what is this guy up to? He would prepare well, he would read books on other sportspeople or things happening around the world.
00:58:19
Harish: Final question, Sumeet. Now when you look back at the different cricketers you worked with. Some people adapted to these changes quickly, some people would have taken some time. So any thoughts on that, after two decades when you see some of those people progressing to doing different things. Do you still see them being relevant, keeping in mind the readiness to adapt to change? What is your take on that?
00:58:56
Sumeet: Yeah. If you see the top three players, they continue to be extremely relevant now. Dada went on to be the BCCI chief, I think his man-management skills got him there. You had to hold diverse opinions, to be available to talk and still be able to push forth your case. In fact, my prediction is that he can become the future prime minister if he wants to. Tendulkar, donning the role of responsibility, if you see his social media posts today, he is being responsible in terms of the messages he wants to convey. He knows that so many people are looking up to him, he consciously tries to send out the right message. Dravid is the coach of the India A team, I’m sure he follows the newer methods to bring them up to speed and make them available to the national team. I would say they have gone about being connected to cricket and doing their bit for Indian cricket to ensure that India becomes a stronghold and there are a ready set of players who are distinguishing themselves. It’s not just cricket also, taking it as a sport. Many years ago, it was hardly a few who took sport as a career. They had to rely on alternate careers and jobs to progress. But now you can pursue sports, cricket has played a very important role to promote sport as a career.
01:00:37
Harish: That brings us to the end of the chat, Sumeet. But we are not going to let you go without a couple of hot takes. This is where I think more of what you are doing currently is going to come in. What do you think is the future relevance of sports analytics?
01:00:52
Sumeet: So as long as the sport is played and team-based and individual sports, technology will continue to play an important role. It’s like big data. The more data that you have, will give you the necessary inputs and insights to make the necessary decision, work on our attributes or the team attributes, and then stick to the plan. Definitely, there’s a huge scope for data analytics. But the flip side is that you needn’t overdo it. For example, when the team won, that time nobody was coming and asking them how they played well, things like that. It was like they knew within themselves that they had done it right and had contributed to the success. Only when you didn’t do well, then there would be a huge rush and wanted to see their performances. If you ask me, right now the new crop of sportsmen are looking at technology and other aspects of preparation very seriously. I’m sure there are newer patterns in how individuals look at their performances or the teams’ like how I gave examples of how it happened then. Maybe some of the key things continue, there must be some newer things that they look at. I’m sure there are newer insights and parts of data analytics that are contributing to a team’s performance.
01:02:24
Harish: Okay. The final one, Sumeet. What do you think is the future relevance of AI in media and entertainment? Because with GPT-3 coming in, you can probably churn out great pieces of art which would have needed 15-20 years of a person sitting in a room and writing. These days you have an algorithm churning it out. What do you think is the relevance of AI in media and entertainment?
01:02:52
Sumeet: Yeah. It’s a new data mine. How AI and ML are going to change the world? That’s the line. I will say this will enter every sector, not just media and entertainment, we are seeing use cases around it. So even in media and entertainment, you can imagine a whole set of use cases and it depends on the context, whether it’s like a consumer context or a business context or you want to drive a message for broadcasting. With all this data being generated, millions of data bytes are being created. One relevance is to videos also. So much content is being put out. Whether it’s text on Twitter or video on Instagram, TikTok, and other sources. There will surely be many companies and research institutes who will want to process that to derive some meaningful construct and that could be used for the purpose it’s used for, commercial or to understand something, to prepare like with the experience that I had. Whether it’s media, entertainment, or a whole host of technology on their own. There was one technology that I had come across which I found exciting is how Google is helping us get the data and source information from the web. It crawls across the web and throws information at you in milliseconds. Similarly, with so much video being generated, can algorithms go through each of the videos and pick out aspects that you want to look at? I understand some companies are looking into that. Now imagine with that being progressing, you’ll see a whole lot of possibilities.
01:04:45
Harish: Yeah. I’m sure there is going to be a lot of progress in these areas and I hope and wish that the human element is never lost, like how we saw you made a lot of that change possible with your contribution and interventions with the computer analysis part for the Indian cricket team in 2002. I’m sure humans are never going to be completely out of the picture with any of these technologies, however good they are. Thanks a lot, Sumeet, for taking us back to those days, helping me relive some of my memories. It was a trip down memory lane. What you spoke about helped me a lot to make those connections to the work we do right now, to our clients where we are talking about change management, transformation, and what should the leaders be talking about. I’m sure the listeners are also going to draw those connections and apply these to their lives. Thanks a lot, Sumeet, for this.
01:05:50
Sumeet: Thanks a lot, Harish. It was a fun conversation. What I remember is, telling a friend recently is that it helps me as well to recall. Unless I speak or write about it, I have started to forget a few things, so thank you very much for that opportunity to recall a whole lot of the incidents and experiences that I had. Always a pleasure talking to you and the folks at CTQ.