A case study in in-group favoritism, resilience, and the real cost of ignoring experience.
I almost did not make it back to the cricket ground.
In 2021, I met with a serious accident. Surgery followed. A titanium rod was implanted in my right leg. Cricket — a sport I had played as a main bowler for my company since 2012 — came to a sudden, painful stop.
But passion is a powerful engine. Through disciplined recovery, structured strength training, and a clear set of targets, I fought my way back. When our company revived its interdepartmental cricket tournament after five years of absence, I was ready.
Our team was ready.
What followed was one of the sharpest leadership lessons I have experienced in over a decade of professional life — not in a boardroom, not in a performance review, but on a dusty cricket ground, over eight overs.
The Setup: A Plan Everyone Agreed To
Our team had everything going for it. A deliberate mix of young energy and seasoned experience. A young captain, Sharan, selected on the basis of his enthusiasm and his stated willingness to collaborate with senior players.
Before the match, we sat together and agreed on a clear strategy:
- Batting: A balanced order pairing senior judgment with junior aggression.
- Bowling: Each bowler to bowl one over, with strong performers earning a second.
- Decision-making: Shared, with seniors and juniors contributing equally.
We won the toss. Elected to bat. Posted 80 runs from 8 overs — a strong, competitive total to defend.
Then, one by one, every agreed plan disappeared.
What Actually Happened: Four Failures in Eight Overs
Failure 1: The batting order was abandoned immediately
Sharan opened the batting alongside a junior teammate — not the agreed pairing. Senior players who had prepared for meaningful contributions were sent in late, out of sequence, or not at all. The deviation from the plan was immediate, unannounced, and unilateral.
Failure 2: Social circle over skill
When it came to bowling, overs were not assigned on the basis of freshness, ability, or match situation. They were assigned based on social proximity to the captain. Junior friends bowled. Experienced senior players — who had not batted and were physically fresh — waited on the boundary.
Failure 3: Fatigue ignored, rotation discarded
Sharan bowled while visibly fatigued after batting. Players who had already expended significant energy at the crease were asked to bowl again. The rotation system — designed precisely to prevent this — was abandoned entirely. One over alone produced 10 wide deliveries, surrendering free runs and match momentum.
Failure 4: No course correction, even as the match slipped away
As the opposing team accelerated toward the target, no adjustment came from the captain. No senior player was brought into the attack. No substitution of strategy. The match was lost not in a moment but in a series of small, preventable decisions that compounded without intervention.
Final result: Opponent reached 82 runs in 7 overs. We lost by 2 runs. Senior players, experienced and fresh, never bowled.
We did not lose because we lacked talent. We lost because the captain chose his social circle over the team's strategy — and confused authority with wisdom.
Five Leadership Failures With Corporate Parallels
This is not a cricket story. Every pattern Sharan exhibited appears in organisations every week. Here are the five lessons I carry from that ground.
1. In-group favoritism is the most expensive leadership bias
Leaders who default to their social circle create two-tier teams: insiders who act, outsiders who watch. The outsiders are rarely less capable — they are simply less connected to the leader personally.
In a cricket match, this shows up immediately in the scoreboard. In a corporate environment, it shows up months later in attrition data, quiet quitting, and declining performance — when the root cause is far harder to trace back to a leader's preference patterns.
2. Ego over situational awareness
Sharan continued bowling while tired because stepping back felt like stepping down. This is one of the most common and costly leadership errors: confusing personal visibility with team contribution.
True situational leadership requires a single, honest question: who is best positioned to succeed at this task right now? Not: how do I remain central to this moment?
3. Agreement is not the same as alignment
Every player verbally agreed to the rotation strategy before the match. Under pressure, the agreement dissolved within minutes.
Organisational researchers call this the gap between espoused theory — what we say we will do — and theory-in-use — what we actually do under pressure. Bridging that gap requires structure: written plans, assigned roles, and real-time accountability. A plan that exists only in conversation is a wish, not a strategy.
4. Silencing experiential knowledge
More than a decade of tournament experience was sitting on the boundary — pitch-reading ability, knowledge of opponent patterns, pressure management, match situational awareness. This is what researchers call tacit knowledge: deeply embedded, experience-derived insight that cannot be replicated by enthusiasm alone.
When a leader bypasses experienced contributors for socially comfortable choices, they are not just making a tactical error. They are committing an organisational knowledge management failure — discarding a resource that took years to build.
5. Rigidity masquerading as confidence
When the plan was clearly failing — when wides were being bowled, when fatigue was visible, when momentum was shifting — no adjustment came. The captain held course not because evidence supported it, but because correcting course meant acknowledging the current approach was wrong.
Adaptability under pressure is not weakness. It is the defining quality that separates effective leaders from positional ones.
The Other Story: Coming Back From the Ground Up
While this is largely a case study in leadership failure, it is also — for me — a story of what it means to refuse an ending.
The titanium rod in my leg is a permanent reminder of a moment where everything stopped. The return to the field was not accidental. It required:
- Structured physical rehabilitation, week by week
- Strength and conditioning training built around cricket-specific demands
- Progressive, honest goal-setting that accounted for real setbacks
- Belief — on the days when belief was the only thing available
I returned because I chose to treat the injury as a pause, not a full stop.
What that day on the field taught me, however, is that personal resilience is only half the equation. The other half is whether the leader around you creates the conditions for that resilience to be expressed and used.
Individual resilience matters. But inclusive leadership is what allows it to count.
What Should Have Happened: Five Practical Interventions
Leadership failure is most useful when it generates actionable learning. Here is what could have changed the result — and what any leader can apply:
- Formalise the plan before execution begins. Write the batting order and bowling rotation in a shared, visible format before the first ball. A verbal agreement evaporates under pressure. A written one creates collective accountability.
- Appoint a senior strategist alongside the captain. Designate an experienced team member as on-field tactician — separate from the captain's motivational role. Complementary authority is more effective than sole authority.
- Establish rule-based rotation. Create mechanical rules that remove individual discretion from bias-prone decisions. When policy decides, personal preference cannot override it.
- Build a real-time feedback mechanism. Normalise brief mid-performance pauses where senior members can intervene — framed as support, not criticism. An intervention offered as resource-sharing is far easier to accept than one framed as correction.
- Conduct a post-performance data review. Compare actual decisions against the agreed plan using objective performance data, not opinions. Numbers do not blame. They record. And they create the conditions for learning without personal conflict.
A captain — or a manager — is only as strong as the diversity of the team they are willing to trust.
The Takeaway: Leadership Is Not What You Say. It Is What You Do Under Pressure.
The biggest leadership classrooms are rarely the ones we expect.
Sometimes it is a dusty cricket ground. An 8-over match on a weekday afternoon. A team that had everything it needed to win — the talent, the strategy, the experience — except a leader willing to use all of it.
Whether you lead a department, a project team, or a cricket squad, the principles are the same:
- Trust must extend beyond your social circle.
- Agreements must be structured into visible commitments.
- Experience must be valued alongside energy.
- Situational awareness must override ego.
- And your influence must extend from the planning table into execution.
The match is over. The lesson is permanent.
A cricket match, much like a corporate project, is rarely lost due to a lack of talent. It is lost when the ego of the individual silences the wisdom of the collective. True leadership is not about having the power to make every decision — it is about having the wisdom to empower those who are best positioned to win.