| | By Mick James
As England ground
their way to victory in
the Ashes Test series, I
was faced with a dilemma
- a representative of a
major US consultancy was
due to call me at 4pm on
the final day,
potentially a crucial
moment. I racked my
brains to think of ways
to divert my caller into
the tea interval. But
how could I explain my
inability to face a
20-minute interruption
in a match that had
already been in progress
for four days and might
not finish until eight
o’clock that evening?
How could I explain that
people were risking
lives and jobs by
clambering onto roofs
around the ground to
watch a game that would
probably end in a draw
and be brought to a
close by “bad light”?
Worst of all how could I
explain that amid all
this nail-biting tension
in a critical
international match,
everyone was going to
troop off the field for
a pot of tea and a
cucumber sandwich?
Fortunately the game
was pretty safe by the
time the call came
through, and my caller
was also culturally
aware enough to
understand that we were
dealing with one of the
great rivalries in the
game, possibly only
shaded by the fact that
India and Pakistan also
have the nuclear option.
I though it was a shame | |
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| | six batsmen, five
bowlers and a
wicket-keeper, but you
can only field eleven
men. Chess may have its
adherents, but does the
board deteriorate during
play, revising and
undermining defensive
and attacking
possibilities? Cricket
attracts criticism for
its vulnerability to the
weather, but in the
light of recent events,
doesn’t that make it
even richer in metaphors
for life in general
(although I should add
that any economic
downturn in the UK
should not be attributed
to hurricane Katrina or
even petrol shortages,
but the fact that
everyone’s been watching
cricket for the last two
months.). As a simple
contest of bat and ball,
cricket can look dull
and protracted compared
to say, baseball. Looked
at as a task of managing
limited resources in a
rapidly shifting
competitive environment,
cricket is a constantly
engaging intellectual
challenge.
So why don’t we see
more consultancy
involvement in cricket?
PwC has stepped down
from providing the
player rankings. The
last major involvement I
recall was when Andersen
Consulting sponsored
Glamorgan in the 1990s.
When I attended a very
entertaining one-day
match I had some
interesting
conversations which | |
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| | shaped my thinking about
cricket, and indeed
consultancy to this day.
Andersen’s approach to
sponsorship in those
days was to offer not
cash but “in kind”
consultancy and they had
brought in their human
performance experts to
work with the team. The
relationship had some
success, but eventually
there were problems over
the overlap between the
captain’s authority and
the consultants’ sphere
of influence—not an
unfamiliar consultancy
scenario.
They introduced a an
intriguing approach
which had at its
foundation the notion
that you had to accept
that star opposing
players would perform
well, but that you could
still beat the team as a
whole. I was strongly
reminded of this
approach watching
England beat Australia
during a season in which
Australia’s star player,
the bowler Shane Warne,
achieved his best ever
figures. In fact most
commentators before the
series would have marked
the Australian team, on
form, as individually
superior in almost every
instance to their
English counterparts.
Which brings us to my
definition of cricket,
and indeed consultancy:
it’s the art of beating
people who are better
than you. Anyone can
theoretically take a
company with great
products, great people | |
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| | and a booming market and
turn it into a
world-beater (what is
surprising is how few
do). To take a limping
brand or an
under-resourced start-up
and turn it
around—that’s a major
achievement, and one
that we’ve arguably seen
in English cricket, with
full credit given to
coaches and long-term
change and development
programmes.
So will the current
cricket mania bring more
consultancies into the
cricketing arena?
There’s certainly no
shortage of openings
from sponsors. I note
that Paul Russell, the
Andersen partner who
hosted our trip to
Glamorgan all those
years ago is now
chairman of the club,
and currently engaged in
a high-profile and
controversial change
programme, so they’ll be
a team to watch. The
move into consultancy of
Indian firms, such as
Tata, Wipro and
particularly Infosys,
can only deepen the
links with cricket. When
Infosys launched their
consultancy in the
States, they made much
of the values of
sportsmanship and fair
play. I believe
consultancy and cricket
have much to offer each
other, and it’s a point
I’d love to discuss
further—preferably over
a beer, in a tent, near
a very large and closely
mown field! | |
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| | that we couldn’t discuss
the match, for if ever
there was a sport that
should appeal to
consultants world wide,
it’s cricket.
It’s not just a
chance to deploy a
baffling terminology,
but what consultant
could fail to warm to
the Duckworth/Lewis
method (for ensuring a
fair contest in
rain-interrupted one-day
games) or the relative
merits of fielding at
“short leg” versus
“silly point”. Like so
much consultancy
“jargon”, once mastered
you have a wonderful way
of talking about complex
matters that is both
precise and concise. Try
to come up with a better
way to get a man to
stand exactly where you
want him to in a field,
and you begin to
appreciate the beauty of
it all.
But it’s the
strategic and tactical
possibilities of
cricket, and
particularly Test
cricket, that make it
the consultants’ game
par excellence. An ideal
cricket team consists of | |
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