CHENNAI: Leadership lessons are always a double-edged sword. Especially when you make it the topic of your book. Not only convincing the readers, even the writer needs to be convinced himself that he can send the right message across. If he/she isn’t, it tends to fall flat, so much so that you tend to hide the book in some corner so that you never come across it.
Given the challenges of writing such books, former India cricketer WV Raman, who is currently head coach of the national women’s side, has come up with a gem in his first book — The Winning Sixer: Leadership Lessons to Master.
Raman couldn’t have chosen a better topic to write on. One of the most astute cricketing brains in the country, there were no doubt expectations as to what you are going to get as a reader. That’s because Raman, whose career as player and coach spans across four decades, has plenty to tell.
For starters, Raman isn’t telling you the story directly. The book is a conversation between Raman and his friend Ramesh Kannan, who seeks the former’s advice on what makes a good leader as a new job awaits him. You get the feeling of being a fly on the wall listening to two friends who discuss everything about leadership qualities and what makes leaders stand out.
Thanks to the vast experience Raman has and the personalities and characters he has come across, he has plenty of anecdotes to share, with leadership advises sandwiched in between. You don’t feel something is fed upon you until you finish a chapter. Reading about the Five Cs of leadership can be boring, but here Raman blends the message with his interactions with Tiger Pataudi, or by seeking inspiration from Mike Brearley, or by pointing to the captaincy styles of Sourav Ganguly and MS Dhoni.
Being one who has always stressed on communication, it doesn’t surprise that he spends time on the topic with stories from Pataudi’s days to those of his own as coach. Raman has picked these stories from life around him and from what he heard and read from illustrious names like Gary Sobers, Kapil Dev, Arnold Palmer, Sir Richard Branson, Mark McCormack, Sania Mirza, Jeev Milkha Singh, Abhinav Bindra, Vasudevan Baskaran and put it across in an engaging manner.
Insights into how Sania shifted her goal posts to be among the elite and how a young Pullela Gopichand battled economic challenges to come out on top, or how Jeev picked up golf as a career or how Srinivas Venkatraghavan bowled with a swollen ankle and picked up seven wickets are qualities that those who seek to be leaders can draw inspiration from.
Those things aside, the manner in which Raman recollects the events of dealing with rookies like Murali Vijay and Vijay Shankar and playing his role in their development and the way he went about convincing Lakshmipathy Balaji that he can come back and bowl after a career-threatening injury are gems that readers wouldn’t have come across before.
If a book’s primary objective is to send a message across to its readers, this one does it. If it’s purpose is to give you the right vibes without you knowing it, Raman does the same without boring you. The only thing you question, though, is what took Raman so long to come out with this.