Monday 10 May 2010

Indian Cricket Team's Debacle through Ishikawa Diagram

Ishikawa diagrams (also called fishbone diagrams or cause-and-effect diagrams) are diagrams that show the causes of a certain event. Common uses of the Ishikawa diagram are product design and quality defect prevention, to identify potential factors causing an overall effect.Each cause or reason for imperfection is a source of variation. Causes are usually grouped into major categories to identify these sources of variation. The categories typically include:


People: Anyone involved with the process
Methods: How the process is performed and the specific requirements for doing it, such as policies, procedures, rules, regulations and laws.
Environment: The conditions, such as location, time, temperature, and culture in which the process operates
Management: The overall management responsible for given people, methods and process in general.

 --Courtesy - Uncle Wiki
 
You must be wondering what is all this. I have always found most of Managerial fundae very little useful in day to day life. But fish-bone diagram is such a kick-ass technique that gets straight to the point. Just put the scenario of recent Indian Cricket Team's performance in big ICC events and let's see what we got.
Now I am not a cricketing expert and the inferences here are straight out of my little knowledge about the game and some personal grudges too (you will know that.)
 
Now in detail:
 
People:
Ravindra Jadeja:
You need an exceptional talent to screw up a match single handedly. And this guy is just the one we were looking for. Not just once but he has done it over and over again.
Gosh I missed him in IPL, otherwise he could have added some more feathers in his cap. Besides being in The Great Dhoni's good book, he sometimes violets contracting laws, drops few important catches, play a vital role to keep Sachin away from century and we all love the way he bats, don't we?
Ravindra Jadeja is such an ASSet to team youngistan. And if his young god (read Dhoni) allows may we see him again and again and again.
 
Dhoni:
Now being MSD is toughest job, no matter what you do (or what you don't do), you get credit for all the good things. But the ever lucky captain of Indian Cricket team is losing his good luck. Being really fair to him he is losing his form too..Now don't talk about his innings in IPL (We will come to that latter) but even the greatest fans of MSD will realize that he has changed his batting  style. Shall we call it maturing with the age? Well not exactly, he still struggles and the lack of technique is quite evident and gets exploited repetitively now.
Another thing that is really disturbing is his hold over the team.  It just doesn't look Dhoni's team anymore. The Captain Cool is no more cool....might be his visits to Red Light Area in Chennai should solve this issue.
 
Method:
Team Selection:
Now this one is as old as Woman's Reservation Bill in parliament. You  just can not satisfy Captain, Senior Players, TV reporters and Indian fans at a time period! I kind of pity selection committee...Frankly it's a thankless job. If team wins Dhoni gets all the credit if they lose we put it on to selection committee.
 
Technique:
OK accepted we can't play short pitched ball...now what? we still don't have any remedy on that we just keep on finding workarounds for it.
And what's workaround for that? Playing matches in Indian Subcontinent or series against Minos.
Ganguly still can't play it and struggled in IPL 3 with the very problem. How many from team youngistan do that?
 
Environment:
IPL
Lets talk IPL..what Indian Cricket team got from IPL
Lalit Modi, Money, Injuries, Fatigue, Cheer-leaders (Glass Half empty)
Yousuf Pathan, Ravindra Jadeja (Glass still half empty)
I have no complains against IPL, I have watched it for entertainment and it guaranteed that to me totally. What the whole point missing here is comparing and judging IPL for International Cricket. We did that mistake from IPL season 1, 2 and 3. You simply can extrapolate the pool of players both national and international played for IPL to T20 WC. Yousuf Pathan is an ideal example for it. Another case to be noticed is hugely talented Rohit Sharma who nowadays plays only for IPL.
Another thing is timing, IPL often come just before a major ICC tournament and as IPL is voluntary option for all the players. Most of the Indian Players opt for it...with the obvious reason (well nothing wrong in it) what hurts here is justifying IPL by saying it as more match practice. Come On! being a viewer I got tired of watching T20 then players must have been tired by now.
 
Management:
BCCI
And then comes the management who are in a way responsible for every aspect of it. BCCI is headed by Sharad Pawar and that talks tons of things. All we are looking for a zeal to solve these issues.
 
Ishikawa diagram puts the causes on board to find out the solutions.....do we have it?
 
Note: Again this is totally personal viewpoint and based on same recent data and my understanding about the game.

1 comment:

sid joshi said...

Indeed good work on indian cricket and Ishikawa diagrams and their mapping !