Obama & Dhoni - paving the way for strong and sensible Leadership

The last few weeks have seen a couple of interesting personalities taking over leadership mantle for 2 of the toughest jobs in the world - The President of United States of America and the captaincy of the Indian Cricket Team. Strangely enough, both Barack Obama and Mahendar singh Dhoni bring a lot of common leadership traits to their seemingly diverse and tough roles.

• Both of them have risen from very modest beginings. Nobody in their wildest sense would have imagined an African Amercian from Hawaii rising up to become the president of the most powerful nation in the world. Equally startling is the rise of the boy from Jharkand, an indian state locked up in the heart of the Indian peninsula where dreaming up to play for local club would itself be considered a stupendous achievement. The celebrated writer, Peter Roebuck, who in my opinion is one of the best unbiased cricketing minds in the world today recently had a profile of Dhoni which did highlight the rise of Dhoni as well as the challenges up ahead in a captivating article.


• Both of them bring together a rare calmness and a cool head to the table. Obama's tackling of the Mccain tirade especially on the Bill Ayers issue revealed that he was a mature and confident individual who could articulate his logic clearly without getting unneccessarily emotional. Dhoni's calmness and maturity has recently been seenin a number of terrific Indian victories in different facets of the game over the last couple of years. His leadership has been calm, clinical and to a large extent, well in control of his emotions - clearly not what one would expect from a small-town boy in a nation which is so cricket-crazy that one poor performance by the team can lead to bloody riots.


• Both display an ability to stand up to the system if there is chance of it being a deterrent in their quest towards excellence. Obama's masterstroke of not relying on public financing (the first presidential candidate to ever do so) and rely on his own fund raising campaigns can be quite compared to Dhoni's stand of not going on the Sri Lanka tour citing exhaustion. Not even somebody of the stature of Sachin Tendulkar has had the gall to stand up to the system and mention that they were exhausted and needed rest. While Obama's stand resulted in the owerflowing of the Democrats , Dhoni's self imposed rejunevation resulted in a well charged indian leader who was ready to handle bigger challenges.


• The challenges ahead for these 2 personalities, although extremely diverse are indeed tough. While Obama has the challenge of tackling the worst ever economic catastrophe since the Great Depression, Dhoni will have the prying eyes of a billion Indians watching over his every move as he strives to make India the leading Cricketing giant. (considering the absudity of the average indian's reaction to cricket, one might even call Dhoni's job, a tougher one than Obama's)


• Just as Obama is getting ready to tackle the excesses left behind by an arrogant bush Administration that has left the world in a far worse state than what it was a decade ago, Dhoni needs to find alternatives to the stalwarts who are in the sunset of their careers in the current team


• While Obama tackles a economy that is woefully short of liquidity and weakening markets, Dhoni needs to sharpen his skills to match up to the politics of the BCCI, the most wealthy cricket body in the world today which is changing the dynamics of the gentleman's game.


• While Obama has Putin/Osama/Zardari et al to deal with, Dhoni has BCCI/IPL/Bollywood to handle.


• Both these leaders avoid making knee-jerk reactions. They are well planned which in turns opens up opportunities for their maverick oponents to make fools of themselves, thereby locking them up in a vicious cycle of stress from where redemption is anything but difficult. Mccain's ridiculous acts including the choice of Sarah Palin, the publicizing of Joe the Plumber and the drama during the passing of the Finance bill were clear indications of the crumbling of his knee jerk campaign against the well organized smart tactics of Obama. An equally comparable situation would be what swept away Ricky Ponting, the flamboyant Australian skipper during the recently concluded test series. Ponting, considered one of the shrewdest minds in cricket with a captaincy record that even Dhoni would kill to have, found it extremely difficult to keep his act together. The slow bowling rates as well as an overall defensive mindset (which is so uncharacteristic of the Aussies) were all part of a well thought out trap that Dhoni put together.
  

As roebuck puts it, both these personalities do not bring hope but expectations. They have demonstrated the uncanny ability to balance their immense pressures while keeping their senses fairly stable and human. To a curious watcher like me, this represents strong and sensible leadership. All i hope is that this is sustainable and not a flash in the pan. Kudos to the underdogs. maybe their flock grow