Coming out of a self-imposed retirement (a story about influence)
Influence is part selling and part persuasion. You can persuade and not succeed. You can sell, upsell, oversell and plead, and still fall flat on your face.
The thing that binds everything together is influence.
We spend a lot of time trying to sell and influence people even if we don’t necessarily sell for a living.
We use influence when we want our friends to watch a movie or show we are keen on watching.
Your children try to influence you to take them to a movie or buy them an expensive toy or let them play on the tab for 15 minutes more.
Politicians try to influence us to vote for them even if they haven’t fulfilled any of their poll promises.
Influence is part selling and part persuasion. You can persuade and not succeed. You can sell, upsell, oversell and plead, and still fall flat on your face.
The thing that binds everything together is influence.
Social media has corrupted this term viz a viz influencers, people who claim to have followers who will buy what you ask them to or subscribe to a service they extol.
At its most basic form, influence is getting someone to actually take action. Which is why parents warn their teenagers to steer clear of bad influences (not that bad influences end after teenage).
Now let’s dive into how an Indian captain convinced and cajoled his star bowler to come out of retirement just before the 2003 World Cup. It’s a story of influence and one with many takeaways.
When you look at the current bowling arsenal of the Indian cricket team consisting of Mohammad Shami, Jasprit Bumrah and Bhuvaneshwar Kumar, it’s easy to forget the long and arduous journey that the team took to get to a place where they have a bowling attack that is effective, dependable and lethal.
It can be said that the first genuine Indian fast bowler that comes to most people’s minds is Javagal Srinath. He was every bit the antithesis of a pace bowler. He was vegetarian (mostly), didn’t glare or swear at batsmen (he once apologized to Ricky Ponting after bouncing him) and he was from Mysore in South India, one of the most peaceful cities in India.
When Javagal Srinath was at his prime he lacked something very basic — support at the other end. If a strike bowler has to be effective, he needs a partner at the other end who will keep up the pressure. For a few years, his statemate Venkatesh Prasad bowled in tandem with him. Prasad was a medium pacer who used the slower ball to full effect but after the initial burst, it was foolhardy to expect the duo to maintain the pressure and get wickets.
When India played at home, the pitches were prepared to favor the spinners and the side got away with that sort of half-assed planning. Conversely, Srinath bowled a couple of his best spells in India — one against South Africa where he got 6 wickets for 21 runs in one inning and another where he took 8 wickets for 81 runs against Pakistan.
But the lack of a genuine third pacer meant that when the team toured abroad, they didn’t stand a chance. The bouncy and quick pitches rendered the spinners largely ineffective and the lack of pace bowling firepower that teams like South Africa, Pakistan and Australia possessed meant that winning a test match abroad was merely a pipe dream.
All of this meant Javagal Srinath took on an inordinate amount of the bowling load upon himself. In the late 90s, this led to a shoulder injury that almost ended his career. By the early 2000s, Srinath was a spent force. Personal upheavals and injuries made him throw in the towel and he announced his retirement from test cricket in 2002. He wanted to channelize all of his efforts on the shorter format keeping in mind the World Cup. But in what can be seen a slight towards him by the selectors for his decision to hang up his boots in test cricket, Srinath was also not considered for One-Dayers, a format he was still keen on playing in. Most speculated that by announcing his retirement from tests, Srinath had written his own epitaph when it came to his international cricket career.
But his captain Sourav Ganguly would have none of it. He believed that Javagal Srinath wasn’t yet a spent force, that he had a lot to offer to the game and with the 2003 World Cup on the horizon, having Srinath in the side was a no-brainer.
Srinath didn’t reconsider his decision for a series that the team played in England. Yet, Ganguly didn’t give up that easily. He constantly persuaded Srinath to return.
Finally, Srinath gave in to Ganguly’s pleas.
Ganguly went against the wishes of the BCCI to have Srinath included in the side for the Champions Trophy final in late 2002.
Reacting to all of this, Srinath had said “It was a call which I wanted to hear. It was good of my captain to call me back.”
Later, Sourav Ganguly, his decision of bringing back Srinath validated, said: “I told you he had much more cricket left in him.”
In what would turn out to be his last few months as an international cricketer, Javagal Srinath bowled like a dream. He was the life of team meetings and took it upon himself to mentor Zaheer Khan and Ashish Nehra. He took 16 wickets in the World Cup and barring the finals, where the Indian bowling attack was blown to smithereens by Australia, they came together beautifully, winning 9 matches on the trot.
If Sourav Ganguly hadn’t pleaded and cajoled with Javagal Srinath, it is highly unlikely that Srinath would have made a comeback and enjoyed the final flourish that he did. At the same time, his retirement was also a premature one. But if he didn’t have a captain who wanted him back, he would be ruing his decision for the rest of his life.
This small incident is an example of good influence reaching its conclusion.
On one hand, there was a captain who desperately wanted a particular player on his side.
On the other hand was a player who after announcing his retirement in haste, probably regretted it.
If Srinath wasn’t rethinking his decision in his heart of heart, all of Ganguly’s pleas would have had no effect.
If Srinath was keen on coming back but Ganguly didn’t want to have anything to do with him, none of this would even be written.
Ganguly was a captain who fought for his players and earned their respect by doing so. This meant his credibility was beyond reproach.
In other words, the perfect confluence of persuasion is when:
- there is a credible person doing the influencing/selling
- there is someone who is ready to listen to your message
Selling/persuading/influencing runs into roadblocks when one of these is in short supply or doesn’t exist.
If you don’t see someone as credible or worthy of respect, you won’t pay heed to them and all their efforts to influence you will be wasted.
If someone isn’t ready to make a change or a shift, all your efforts to influence them will be wasted.
You might need to persuade some people repeatedly to get them to change their mind.
The next time you seek to influence someone, this is something worth thinking about.
Influence = Credibility of the person seeking to influence + Readiness of the person being influenced.
