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When Satya Nadella of Microsoft gave away too many runs in cricket

Satya Nadella credits the game of cricket to have shaped his ability to manage teams in Microsoft. “I think playing cricket taught me more about working in teams and leadership that has stayed with me throughout my career,” Nadella said after his appointment as Microsoft CEO was announced in 2014.

Satya Nadella, Microsoft, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Green card, Satya Nadella wife, Satya Nadella wife Anu
With his permanent residency coming in the way of his newly wed wife joining him in the US, Satya Nadella surrendered his Green Card and applied for a H1-B visa, a move which gave him instant notoriety around the Microsoft Campus in Redmond, the Indian-born CEO has revealed. (PTI)

If there’s one thing that unites India across its vast social spectrum, it’s passion for cricket. Latest to reiterate his love for the game is Microsoft’s top man: Satya Nadella. In a recent interview to CNBC TV18, Satya Nadella said, “ I enjoyed the game, I learnt a lot. Any of us who play a team sport will think about lessons learnt. The dusty cricket fields of the Deccan plateau are still things I recount.”

In his new book, : “Hit Refresh,” he writes that he was ‘good enough’ to play for his Hyderabad Public School’s team. “I was an off- spin bowler, which in baseball would be the equivalent to a pitcher with a sharp breaking curveball,” he writes in his autobiography.

Satya Nadella too, had his bad days on the field. Recounting one such incident, he said, “ There was this guy, who was the captain of our team, and I was the bowler, or a pitcher in baseball. I was putting up very ordinary stuff that day. He changes me and he comes on, which is by the way, the intricacies of cricket strategy, which I won’t bore you with. He gets us a breakthrough.” That’s not it, Satya Nadella says that he was again brought into the attack, despite bowling poorly that day! “But then he gives the ball back to me. And I’ve always wondered, why did he do that? Since, he had achieved what I was not able to, he should’ve just carried on,” Satya Nadella told the channel. Reflecting further, Satya Nadella says that the captain didn’t want to break his confidence. “And then, I understand it, although he didn’t verbalise it: He didn’t want to break my confidence,” he told in the same interview.

Satya Nadella credits the game to have shaped his ability to manage teams in Microsoft. “I think playing cricket taught me more about working in teams and leadership that has stayed with me throughout my career,” Nadella said after his appointment as Microsoft CEO was announced in 2014.

Drawing lessons from the game, Satya Nadella said, “The ability to compete! It’s not about the competition, it’s about your own best. That’s something I definitely learnt from team sport.” But how does cricket compare with baseball? Satya Nadella writes in his book, “ Cricket attracts an estimated 2.5 billion fans globally, compared with just half a billion baseball fans. Both are beautiful sports with passionate fans and a body of literature brimming with the grace, excitement, and complexities of competition.”

The CEO of $85 billion dollar enterprise explains the beauty of cricket quoting  Joseph O’Neill, an Irish novelist. “In his novel, Netherland, Joseph O’Neill describes the beauty of the game, its eleven players converging in unison toward the batsman and then returning again and again to their starting point, “a repetition or pulmonary rhythm, as if the field breathed through its luminous visitors.” I think of that metaphor of the cricket team now as a CEO when reflecting on the culture we need in order to be successful,” Microsoft’s Satya Nadella observes in the book, ‘Hit Refresh.’  

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First published on: 02-10-2017 at 11:40 IST
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