Caught at Silly Point

Friday, March 24, 2006

Time for Performance Based for Pay for Indian Cricket Team

So, Indian cricket is back to square one I guess.Wonder have ever proceeded the first square in international cricket.These are the facts
Q: How many Test series has India won outside home in the last 20 years?
A:5 - 1-Srilanka in 1993,2-Bangladesh in 2001 and 2004,1-Pakistan in 2004,1-zimbawe in 2005.Except for the victory against Pakistan we've never won anything significant in the last 20 years.

Q:When was the last time India won a one-day tournament featuring more than 4 test playing teams ?
A:1993 hero cup

So much for our aspiration to become the no.1 in cricket.

I think Indian cricket follows a repeated pattern of victories at home or victories against weak teams which are greeted with euphoria and then the team gets complacent ,plays horrible cricket and loses to weak teams.

One of the reasons why players get away with lazy attitude is that they are guaranteed a handsome pay even if they play school boy cricket .Now with the contract system in play, they can get away with murder and they're surely doing it.Two sample cases Sehwag and Bhajji.These guys dont want to change their game , dont want to adapt to situation , but still will get paid handsome money as per contract.

The solution is to fix some part of player's compensation to their performance and to the result of the games.This should be applicable for the coach also.His yearly compensation should also be based on the team's performance.

All Industries have moved to performance linked pay and it's high time Indian sports also did it. If I dont perform well in the office , then I am sure iam going to disappointed with my pay packet.My Company doesn't care what I did last year , what matters is what hvae I done this year.The same should be applicable to cricket plays as well.

For a successful performance management system , it's important the objectives are clear and they are linked to the correct objectives.A team of ex-test players can decide how to design the compensation system.

A basic structure that I have in mind is 60% of pay is fixed.10% fixed on individual performance and 30% on team performance.The reason I suggest less weightage for individual performance is because some times individuals may have to sacrifice their performance for team's cause.For example , a batsman coming towards the end of he innings may get out cheaply when trying to force the pace.

Designing a performance based compensation for a sports team is definitely not easy given the abstract complexities of sport , but high time it's done for Indian cricket team because there's a total lack of accountability in our team.