Kamal Ghorui
A friend of mine working in food industry has recently been assigned a strategy and planning team role in a higher office. This is a shift from his current leadership (and importantly, more visible) profile, though in a lower office. While he was still mulling over the reassignment, and fighting the dilemma of joining or quitting, we met at my place to watch the T20 World Cup cricket match. It was the semi-final between India and England.
He was visibly disturbed at the fact that he had been moved out of ‘live action’ and pushed into a ‘low intensity’ profile. I was trying to bring peace through some cool words, chilled beverages, and greasy food! After all, he was a seasoned food industry professional.
Amidst the exciting match, he would find lean and lazy moments to express his grouse. I had to decipher meaning amidst the cacophonies of the nibbling of wafers, the roars from the crowd, my friend’s intermittent grouses, and the shouts of the commentators, ‘it has gone for the maaaximum’.
Meanwhile, Axar Patel took a spectacular catch by running 24 meters backwards in very few seconds.
We jumped and started the early celebrations.
As we settled for the next delivery, my friend said, “This is action!”
I refrained from a comment; and preferred to muse. I recalled a statement which is often ascribed to Abraham Lincoln (though without any historical evidence) that if he had to chop a tree in six hours, he would spend four hours in sharpening the axe. A legendary Dutch footballer and coach Johan Cruyff gave an equivalence of this statement in sports. He had famously mentioned that football players had the ball for only 3 minutes on an average in a match; and what they did during the remaining 87 minutes (when they did not have the ball) determined whether they were good players or not.
We continued with the cheers, and the commentary from the match as well as from my friend. My muted responses were ignored by him with indifference.
As luck would have it, Axar Patel was instrumental in another fabulous catch a few minutes later.
I jumped. He grumbled.
I was losing my patience.
He said, “This is the type of real action that I want.”
This was the last straw!
I had reached the end of the rope. I shouted, with aplomb, “Do you know that in a cricket match how much time is spent ‘in action’ and how much time is spent in supposedly ‘dull” work of planning and patience?”
I explained to him the football statistics by Cruyff and told him that the impact was not always measured by the time on the ball. Armed with my musings and memory, I told him, “Just like the football statistics on ‘ball in play’ time, cricket has equally interesting numbers. In a T20 match, the total duration is approximately 210 minutes. The ball is ‘live’ for only about 15–20 minutes of that entire window. Analytical breakdowns of T20 match flow often cite that each delivery (from release to dead ball) averages roughly 4 seconds of ‘live’ action. With 240 legal deliveries, this equals ~16 minutes.”
“Hmm,” was the only response I heard, besides the crunching of the crackers.
I continued, “The axe-sharpening equivalence also exists in cricket. As per bio-mechanical studies, a ball travelling at 140–150 kilometer per hour reaches the destination (a fielder) in approximately 0.45 to 0.5 seconds. In other words, fielders must ‘sharpen their axe’ (and stay focused) for all deliveries during opponent’s batting, just for the 0.5 seconds during which the ball might actually fly toward them!”
As the match was progressing quickly, so was my discourse, which went on, “Do you not see that someone out there must design the plan and process to instil this focus, and an eye on details, among these fielders or, in your sense, ‘men in action’.”
My voice took a pause, as I noted him trying to interject. He slowly opened his mouth, and spoke softly, “Yes, someone must do that; and do that right as well. It is this ‘low intensity’ work done in the background that imbibes a sense of discipline and focus to bring out a meaningful action.” There was a beaming smile on his face, and a spark in his eyes, as those words came out.
I was glad and munched a few more snacks in the excitement.
In the meantime, India won the match.
We hugged each other and jumped in joy. As we muted the television after a while, we laughed at the moments of the last few hours. I realised that I had lost my patience. I do not know whether he realised that he had over-reacted to a situation, but he did confess that he had undermined the importance of the need for planning, observation and building a sharp eye for all situations before anything translated to action.
Rubbing aside our immaturities, we pocketed our respective lessons on patience and focus. Though it was the sensational cricket match that brought this revelation, yet my friend summed it up in a single sentence from the other blockbuster-in-news that is now an all-time high grosser for Bollywood – Dhurandhar:
“Kismet ki ek bahut khoobsoorat aadat hai ki wo waqt aaney par badalti hai.. lekin filhaal, nazar aur sabr”
(Fate has a beautiful habit of changing with time; but as one waits, one must not forget the importance of focus and keeping a sharp eye on situations while maintaining patience).
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