Five Management Lessons From ICC World Cup 2019 Final

We live in a country where the child learns the rules of cricket before learning the alphabets. While our dream ended with India’s exit from the world cup, cricket had its own way of glueing us to the world cup. The world cup final match between England and NewZealand is perhaps the biggest moment in the history of cricket. The match ferried us on a roller coaster of emotions - joy, sympathy, sadness, regret and ecstasy.

When my excitement levels reverted to the mean, the MBA student in me interpreted the match to be more than just an entertainer.

Here are the five important management lessons one can learn from the greatest ODI match ever.

1. Best successes come on the heels of failure

A country invented a sport but couldn't win a single world cup while its colonies have won it, how embarrassing was that. For years, the England cricket team was trolled and made fun of for their failure to win the world cup. In the 2015 world cup, England faced a humiliating exit from the group stage. England didn’t deter from any of these. They revamped the whole team, dropped the key players and took the calculated risks such as adding Jofra Archer to the team just before a month of the world cup. And the rest is history!

Take the calculated risks, have faith in your abilities and the hard work eventually pays off.

2. Accept the defeat gracefully

In what must be a horrible way to lose, Kane Williamson, the captain of Newzealand was very graceful, cool and calm like a yogi. He did not blame the ICC rules outright. In his words, "What did they win it on, boundaries? While the emotions are raw it's pretty hard to swallow when two teams work so hard to get to this moment in time,"  I fall short of words to describe this fine gentleman Kane. I can't think of any other captain who could have taken that overthrow penalty as cool as he did. We would have flipped out.

Accepting the defeats gracefully is an achievement in itself for defeats are part of life. If possible, take a lesson or two from the defeat and walk away.

3. Ex-Post Facto Criticism is Foolish

We all have witnessed how the silly (seemingly) rule that the team with more boundaries wins the world cup. There was a lot of public outcry over this rule. However, both the teams walked into the pitch fully aware of the rules before the super over. The rules weren’t made on the fly. It was clearly displayed on the big screen. Nobody complained about the rules before the match started.

4. Never Succumb to peer pressure

You might have seen the viral video where the Muslim players of England - Adil Rashid and Moeen Ali ran away the moment rest of the England players started the Champagne celebration. If you detach the religious element from this scenario, both the players did not succumb to the peer pressure. Instead, they held on to their beliefs firmly.

The takeaway from this incident is that - do what is right for you and never force fit yourself into the crowd.

5. Uncontrollable factor has the ability to make or break

Who had imagined the final of the world cup to end in a tie and then the super over to end in a tie too? And amidst the most critical over of the match, four extra runs were awarded due to overthrow. The “uncontrollable factor” was with England not once but twice.  Had it not been this time, England would have had to swallow more trolls and criticism for not winning the world cup despite being inventors of cricket.

Yes, one least wishes things to be controlled by the things that are not in their hands. But many situations in life are ruled by the uncontrollable factor which you may simply call as luck.