Kolkata: Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft feels that his leadership style resembles that of former Indian skipper Sourav Ganguly. He is currently in India for a two-day event for the promotion of his book, “Hit Refresh” which has the story of his growth after he rose to the top.
He said, “I am obsessed with cricket. No matter where I am, this beautiful game is always in the back of my mind.”
His book is inspired by the leadership lessons from his playing days in the Hyderabad Public School which has names like Ajay Banga of MasterCard, Prem Watsa of Fairfax Financial Holdings and Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen as it’s alumni.
“Cricket shaped my leadership style,” said Nadella, who also said in his book that he was playing with the Kookaburra ball when he got to know that he would be appointed as the third CEO of the $85 billion software giant Microsoft, after the likes of Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer.
He promptly named, “Sourav Ganguly”, when he was asked as to which Indian captain’s leadership style resembled his.
The Microsoft CEO felt that it was Ganguly who cultivated the seeds of self-belief in the Indian team that it could win abroad as well.
“That was the first time when I saw somebody bet on kids from Uttar Pradesh…. Dhoni also came up around that time…. I am a big believer in people like that who, not because of their individual achievement on the field, have fundamentally brought about a broader change which has now come to the fore,” he said.
He also said, “When you see somebody like Umesh Yadav make it into the Indian team, when you see people from every state making it on merit, (you wonder) how did that happen? Because (until Ganguly arrived) it was a system that was about the metropolis and maybe five-six states that essentially controlled Indian cricket. I don’t think that is the case anymore.”
In his book, he also wrote about players who have gone on to make their international debut for India despite being from very ordinary backgrounds.
Although there have been many in the Indian team but right-arm paceman Mohammad Siraj is the latest addition to the list.
He said, “I recently learnt that the guy who made his debut in the recent IPL league came from a neighbourhood in the vicinity of the place where I grew up in Hyderabad. He (Mohammed Siraj) was the son of an auto-rickshaw driver. When I read that, I thought this is amazing. When you think of the Hyderabadis who made it into test cricket in the era when I grew up in, there were the nawabs (Tiger Pataudi), there was the nawab’s cousin (Saad bin Jung, who played for Hyderabad and was a schoolmate)… and now things have changed.”