How India’s T20 WC performance could impact your CAT preparation?

Last week saw a disappointing culmination to India’s T20 World Cup campaign once again. If you are an Indian cricket fan, you would have been heartbroken. But you would also be getting used to it by now. Your reactions could range from trying to justify the team’s poor show with some logic to exercising the choicest of vocabulary on the team. Wherever you lie on this spectrum, there are some positives you can take heart from. There are some lessons that are too pertinent not to see them in the context of your CAT preparation.

What are these relevant takeaways that could help you take your preparation for CAT to the next level?

Here’s what you can underline as lessons for your CAT preparation:

1. Too many cooks spoil the broth:

This is one thing I am concerned about whenever I see the support staff exceeding the playing squad. Or the number of captains India has had over the past one year (6 or 7 across different tours and formats). I am sure each of them would have the best of intent, and wanted the team to succeed. But their experiences, personalities, approaches are likely to have been very different and conflicting. In a game that Sehwag (another expert one might say) feels is as simple as “see ball, hit ball”, so much of strategy and advice from so many people can only make things foggy, and not clearer. Lots of supervision without any real, consistent vision.

Takeaway: Keep your CAT preparation strategy simple. Do not try and imbibe every expert advice you come across (including these from yours truly) or refer to too many experts.

2. Big changes just show panic:

Don’t fix what ain’t broken, just because it failed some times. That’s what India tried to do with their opening combination, their lead spinner, their death overs specialist, and even their wicket keeper – far too often in the recent past. If you chop and change too much, you have a shaky core.

Takeaway: Advice from too many people for your CAT preparation strategy will do more harm than good. Once the core is in place, you can keep working on your weaknesses, but you have to do so without disrupting your strengths.

3. Temperament eats ability for breakfast:

Success in most big things in life (and smaller ones like world cup matches and exams such as the CAT) depends more on your ability to handle pressure, stay calm, and do the basics right than on how talented you are! I cannot stress this enough. More people succeed or fail because of how they approach things mentally in crunch situations, and not because of how talented (or non-talented) they are. Ben Stokes. Period.

Takeaway: Staying calm during the exam is something you must ensure.

4. Fortune favours the brave:

If you are defensive in your mind, life has a way of taking away opportunities from you. Refer, India in its batting power plays throughout the tournament. If you are positive and hang in there, without a fear in your mind, opportunities come in forms you couldn’t have imagined. Refer, Kohli against Pakistan or SKY throughout the tournament.

Takeaway: Those who believe, and are brave armed in that belief, will see luck favouring them more often than not. That’s what you need to arm yourself with to succeed at CAT, and in life.

5. Take lessons from the past, but look ahead

India can’t go back in time and change what happened against England. If one looks back and carries all the baggage, one may slip even further. On the other hand, if one can just take the lessons from the past and play devoid of fear and expectation, it may bring into play some miraculous set of circumstances in the future. Even if that does not happen, it will have proved that it is a team better than what the last 2 T20 world cups show.

Takeaway: The same goes for your CAT prep at any time. You can’t change what has happened in the past, but you give yourself the best chance by taking the lessons from the past, and giving your best in the future!

About the author: Deekshant has sleep-walked through several 100 and 99.9 %iles in practically every section of the CAT. That he is a cricket fan and he writes okay is evident from most of his posts. 1000s of our students swear that he can motivate almost anyone to double his/her percentile through very simple yet powerful inputs. And that’s why every MBAGuru student has direct access to him via mail and Telegram. Oddly, he somehow also finds the time to write songs professionally. And yes … almost missed this … he is an alumnus of IIT Delhi & IIM Cal