CRICKETING LESSONS FOR PERSONAL BRANDING
MI Muhammed Rizard, BBA (HONS) Spl in Mktg (SEUSL), ACIM (UK), AMSLIM (SL)
Personal branding of great players in the legacy of Cricket
Cricket has a potent legend behind its name. In good old days, the players were seen as well talented and played for creating a great momentum in terms of tactful strikes, tricky play for winning the game with the counter part. We could remember from start of cricket, Sir Don Bradman played an excellent cricket, for a century he has been recognized as a one and only man for entire cricket. Even some other players from various countries expressed a good cricket from good platform for the perfection. Their personal inspiration helped to the success majorly.
Breakthrough in Cricket
Cricket still becomes as a dominant factor in business especially when the cricketing icons are retained as a brand ambassador for the companies’ brands. The consumers love brands that are endorsed by the famous cricketing icons. When an advertisement is going on, they look cricketing icons in different perspective; a sudden change on the mindset of them from cricket to advertisement, even more focused on their acting, reactions, expressions, glamour, jargon, maturity, etc so that the cricketers become so popular with the etiquette of cricket. Another paradigm it was created in the history of Cricket is Indian Premier League (IPL). The players were sold for a million rupees and auctions and fighting between IPL’s teams were still going on to get the right players for the right team. In the IPL season, T20 matches are so hot among the cricket advocates. Very big multinational companies invested as strategic partners and some of them were sponsors behind this massive festival. What the main objective to invest behind this game is to get the profit margin for the teams, but in the viewpoint of sponsors and strategic partners, they want a good reputation for their brands and companies. Consequently, this cricket gives a greater income for the players. Some of the emerging authors, and consultancy firms agreed that Cricket became as a business for the players and recognized it as a Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG).
Lessons from Cricket for personal development
Lesson 01: Team spirit
Individual members from various backgrounds of family, ethnicity, culture and morale get together in a cricket team and work as a unit or team with a distinctive performance. In a team of cricket, if one bowler losses his strengths or steadiness by giving huge sixes and fours, another one will come and safe his falls by taking a wicket or making a maiden over. In many times like this manner, the players have shown their degree of team spirits, and courage. In the case of an organization, if anyone who is supposed to work under a team, whether that be operation, marketing, project and finance, he has to first understand what his position is and what he wants to do in a team environment, then look for others’ capabilities, positions, roles, and expectation and finally he has to take a concern where the team is to be driven or taken towards. Sharing your experience and taking care of others’ dues are appraisable and will lead to success.
Lesson 02: Focus on target
In the cricket, if the team wants to achieve a target, they have to move gradually by starting with singles, twos and even boundaries. Over one or two shots they can not achieve big scores. The players on the pitch will have to think for an each over what scores they should attain. Likewise, as an individual in our life has to set a target which is a long-term achievement. Step by step we have to move towards it with the start of small things. In the middle if they stuck, they should not change the target but the strategies that were pursuing can be changed.
Lesson 03: Hard-working and Commitment
Hard-working and commitment in the work are the utmost characteristics for a successful achiever. In cricket, there we could see a lot of hard-working efforts and great commitments of players on the fielding and batting. On the boundary fielding, the players dive and stop the ball not to reach the boundary. That piece of working shows the commitment of players on the cricket. If a batting player, who wants 50 runs off 18 balls for instance, strikes away the balls over the boundaries, that piece of working would give a credit to the hard-working of that batsman. Likewise, in the personal life, we should have hard-working and dedication on our activities. We have always to remind ourselves that we are moving towards a goal. Well planned initiatives with continuous efforts and dedication would ensure the success in the personal life.
Lesson 04: Perform in pressurized time
We often see this sort of situation in cricket, when the match gets tough in the end. There are players who can play extremely well even in the under pressure times. The people who are performing in the pressurized times are enthusiastic and adventurous and will possess multi-tasking capabilities. As we are human beings, we have to do many works in a limited time scale. If the deadline comes closer for the certain tasks while engaged in different works or else many deadlines come closer in a short period, we would be extremely in trouble in finishing those with perfection. In that sort time, anyone who has engaged in under pressure should plan their times allocating to each task or project and execute on time, if any uncertainty comes in the mean time, contingency plan works effectively to tackle those.
Lesson 05: Obey under the leadership
This is one of the characteristics of the effective people. In Cricket, the skipper takes all the privileges in managing a team towards victory. He changes strategies, and behavior of all individual players in the ground and team players abide by to the words of captain in the ground. Likewise, in a team environment, a person who is working for an organization should listen to the leader’s command and shape his movements accordingly. A leader knows very well, where the team’s objective should reach to.
Lesson 06: Learn from Failure
Many of us failed to get the lessons from failure. If a victory comes, we celebrate successfully, on the other hand if a failure comes; we walk off to be squeezed. Our mentality once getting failure impulses the negative sides of us and route to failure again because we did not learn from factors we fell on. In cricket, if a captain of a team failed in a last game, he would think whose mistakes made failure, what mistakes as a captain I did, and formulate strategies to resolve this sort of errors happened in the next game and lead to victory rather than being reactive. In a personal life also, we engaged for a number of works and expect good results. Some write exams. Once they failed on that exam, they think that is the end of life. The reason for failing on exam may be not studying the subjects, and being a good entertainer during the exam period. In this sort of failure situation, we have to be proactive in learning from the failure and make sure the mistakes again not to happen in the next initiative.
Lesson 07: Sustaining on the reputation
In cricket, a reputation lead to win obviously, or rather it would help get the winning in the match. Take an Australian team as an example, opposite team would fear for their reputation of attacking bowlers, stunning fielding and team spirits and loose the steadiness of cricket. This kind of reputation as an individual in our personal life should be built. Have a look on at Bill Gates from Microsoft, Sir Richard Brandson from Virgin, and Steve Job from Apple. They are the people who innovated the business and made breakthrough in it and built a strong reputation behind their names. Likewise, we have also to build a good reputation behind our name and work on hard for a successful career.
Lesson 08: Pre match practice
In cricket, the players practice in a net prior to the match. This practice is a good learning for us. Whatever we do, before implementation we should practice three or four times rehearsals, which will fine-tune the particular work in a good mode and perfection.
Lesson 09: Stick to the time
In Cricket, a tournament is planned on a time scale. They execute the matches on time and finish it as well. In our personal life, we should have a “To Do” list for a day in which all activities are written that are to be done in that particular day, and the time allocation to do the works scheduled. This is a good practice for time management and also the famous author Stephen R Covey stated on his book “7 habits of highly effective people” that a matrix for time management as shown below is useful for managing your times even in a busy work schedule. The “To Do” list could be applied to this model established based on its priorities.
| Urgent I ACTIVITIES: Crises Pressing Problems Deadline- Driven projects | Not Urgent II ACTIVITIES Important Prevention, PC activities Relationship Building Recognizing new opportunities Planning, Recreation |
| III ACTIVITIES: Interruptions, some calls Some mails, Some reports Some Meetings Proximate, presenting matters Popular activities | IV ACTIVITIES: Not Important Football, pleasant activities Some mails Some phone calls |
Source: Stephen, RC, 2004
Lesson 10: Celebrating the success
The players are awarded at the event of post-match presentation in Cricket. The player of the match and winner of the match are given trophies. Once we have got the success in our life for certain works, or achieved some attainments, we have to share it with our friends, family and relations. That will definitely inspire again for another innovation in our life. Facebook is the most appropriate tool to celebrate our success which will motivate from the comments of friends.
In concluding this, there are several thoughts from Cricket that a person has to learn. But the key factors were notified in this article. In the momentum of a human’s life, every minute will give some learning from the past. It is very rare to find a person who got all the times winnings. The great achievers in the world, like scientists, business tycoons and entrepreneurs got failure in the first attempt. Learning from their failure inspired the success to them. So being as continuous learner will shape up our lives always into success with qualities as depicted from the lessons of Cricket.
