Just consider organizing a cricket series\tournament as a project (of course it’s really a project).
One line requirement for the prj - Make the series a trouble free affair.
And for the program mgmt team - Ensure that the series help the country's cricket.
What’s Project Mgr's role - Run the prj to ensure that the one liner above is fulfilled. His functioning begins much before the series starts. He plans for the prj and executes as per the plan.
Past few days have shown how bad is the planning of BCCI.
BCCI did not expect India to be No. 1 test team.
We had very few test matches to be played in 2010. The result of which was obvious, India will loose the number 1 ranking, not by loosing tests but by not playing enough. Some patch up activities are taken up now to have tests but the schedule will tire the overworked cricketers.
Bad prj planning here, but they have shown some risk mgmt strategy...though may not be the best.
Kotla pitch fiasco
A newly laid pitch, never ever used...is put to use for the final match of the series. Delhi was playing ranji trophy matches and not one of them was at Kotla to test the pitch.Luckily India had wrapped up the series against Lanka 3-1 in the previous match. Imagine the series tied at 2-2 and the final match is called off because of bad pitch. India would not have become the number 1 side in ODI even after yesterday's win. BCCI would use its negotiation skills (read it bulldozing strategy) to come out with minimum impact to Kotla. Wait and clap!
Ranji finals - Eclipse day
The fifth day of Ranji finals was to be on the day of one of the longest solar eclipses. It would be dark during the major part of the day. Govt agencies have asked people not to look at the sun with naked eyes. So if the batsman sees the ball, he just has to take the aerial route. No fielder would dare to lift his head to see the ball. Karnataka Cricket association made a proposal to advance the match by a day (not for solar eclipse though)...but the managers at BCCI turned a deaf ear at them. Luckily the match got over on the 4th day.
Ranji rules
BCCI did not formulate the rules for India's biggest domestic tournament. The fixtures for the knockout stages were not ready. Probably it was intentional (to favour the BCCI headquartered team Mumbai). They twisted the fixtures after Mumbai unexpectedly finished 2nd in their group. In this case, BCCI had a project plan which was to have no plan.
All these happened because of severely bad prj mgmt. Efficient project managers are the need of the hour.
One prominent soft skill you would want is - handle the crab mentality really well.
BCCI is a good place to work. (I will come up with a blog on why I say this!) And the company can pay you well. They have one of the best Project Managers of the country. Lalit Modi. But he is busy with another major project. IPL 3. The way he organized the IPL 2 in SA on short notice could be a case study in itself. It was a very successful project.
Recently BCCI decided to clip the wings of our best Project Mgr. This is not really surprising. There’s big money in this project. And of course like everybody else, BCCI has the great “crab mentality”. But one can learn from him.
Best of luck!
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