Commitment to the game

I spent most of the day today, watching cricket --the first match of the Best of Three finals between Australia and India. I did feel happy that India had won but frankly speaking, a little happier that Sachin had scored his forty second and his first ever limited-overs century on Australian soil.

Convergence of individual goal with that of an organization is absolutely an ideal situation as it happened today when for both, India and Sachin, it was a win -win situation. But when these two goals are clashing with each other, then it would be difficult, almost impossible, to convince anyone as to how consideration for an individual can ever outweigh contrasting claim of the organization to which he or she belongs.

I too was surprised when I heard about someone doing it for the first time. Many years ago, we founded a Cell in our Army Headquarters, for advising the Government on merits of various statutory complaints (about denial of promotions, unjust confidential reports etc) submitted to the latter, by the aggrieved serving personnel.

Personnel for staffing this advisory Cell were hand picked, probably for their sense of fair play and integrity. But for most people in uniform all these character qualities come to a grinding halt when there appears to be a clash of interest between the Army as an organization on one hand and an aggrieving individual on the other. Here, natural tendency would be, although it ought not to be, to side with the Army- the Organization.

Fortunately, when this cell was formed, we had a visionary Army Chief who did not feel restricted by such a narrow sense of loyalty. He also could imagine that no member of this Cell would dare go against the organization unless he as the Army Chief, held his hand and therefore felt the need of giving, what we term as, command guidance to the Cell before they could start their work.

He directed that whenever the Cell found that the complaint by the aggrieved serviceman had an adequate merit and that it could be negated only by giving greater weightage to the interest of the Service (Army), the Cell MUST support the aggrieved serviceman and not the other way round. I am not sure how many Army Chiefs around the world would have the courage to take such an anti-organization stand. This is what I call a truly unshackled- free thinking.

We have seen above two digital situations when interest of an individual either clashes or converges with that of an organization. But, is that the only way to look at these two? Must we look at them only as a combination -- when these two either support or contradict each other? Why not view them as separate from each other and judge them independently? Agreed that sometimes, the interest of the organization, like in a World Cup Tournament, would certainly rule supreme and put even an exceptional individual performance into pale. On the other hand, winning or losing loses its sharp edge when myriad such games are played regularly as in Cricket one dayers. Against this background, one must view an exceptional character quality of an individual player – his commitment to the game. Commitment is Dharma. Unfortunately, this commitment can be acknowledged by others only when a player comes good with a sterling performance as Sachin had done today and not otherwise.

Does the argument “team interest outweighs an individual performance” always hold good ? Is commitment to the game less patriotic? Does it always matter whether your team loses or wins even if it may be only of statistical significance?