Corporate Sport

Wednesday, 14 May 2008 23:05

Written by maverick58

Speaking on Sunday to OU from Istanbul where Mallya was stationed to oversee the progress of his high profile sporting investment, the Formula 1 racing team Force India, he revealed the penalty levied on the team for a minor red-light infraction that cost them 3 grid-places was a huge penalty. Grumbled, Mallya, " This is Corporate India that has ventured in the rarefied arena of F1 racing. The race stewards should have pretended not to see this minor exit from the pits on to the grid. The driver did not bump into anyone, he just jumped a redlight which happens a billion times during peak hour traffic across the length and breadth of India every day." That set the tone at the Force India paddock.

Placed at 19th and 20th on the grid at the start of the race, Fisichella showed that he had learnt from his boss by climbing all over the preceding car at the first corner and proceeded to sail out from the race leaving Sutil to limp ahead and wheel some respectability, questionable albeit,as a consolation. Mallya however could not show his corporate think and acumen that he had shown earlier in his pruning of the UB empire by excising non-core businesses from his disparate holdings. His forays into the airline industry led him to the Rajya Sabha in a desperate attempt to serve Kingfisher beer on the craft as a welome drink to those who wanted it.

His latest acquisition, the IPL's Royal Challengers Bangalore has led him to fret and fume in impotent rage. They are lying at the bottom of the table after the half-way round and are now definite not to make the semis-finals. He confessed, after the sacking of the CEO, Charu Sharma that before the IPL players went under the hammer, he had an entirely different shopping list from team captain Rahul Dravid’s.“I had a separate list of players that I wanted. But since Dravid is such an iconic player I trusted his judgment. And Charu Sharma also backed him. After seeing the final list, my friends told me it looked like a test team. But I backed both of them thinking that they advised me properly. Unfortunately in cricket, unlike in any other sport, the captain is the boss,” said a despondent Mallya. And that is where the trouble began. Used as he is to the board of UB listen to him, Mallya found to his chagrin that knowledge-slack of the mysterious ways of cricket doesnt wash well in the Corporate world.

We proceeded to contact Charu Sharma of the Mandira bedi fame of the Fifth Umpire show on Doordarshan when cricket was the DDs monoply by default and not by qualification, he had this to say, “I look at the mirror every morning and wonder why I was considered inadequate. I have no clue about why things happened this way. Mallya listened to Dravid who was responsible for choosing the team. No team is perfect, but did we get the team we wanted? No. The key players were missing at key times” He still is recovering from the shock of his TV headline grabbing exit as CEO of the RCB. Apparently, his former boss and himself have a lot to learn from iconic threats of quitting half-way through and learn not to grass catches while fielding at silly mid-on.

Competitive sport recognizes not the arcane rules of Corporate business but have esoteric rules of their own that are mysterious as the craft with which they are wielded. And helmets are mandatory while fielding at dangerous positions or while making a tight 4g turn at the corner of the counter-clockwise race track of Turkey.

Set as favorite

Bookmark

Email this

Comments (0) add comment

Write comment

Corporate Sport

Statistics

Who's Online

Subscribe to RSS

Featured Links

Email subscription

Latest Comment