What Investors Can Learn From Rahul Dravid by Marcellus Investment Managers

"If you ask sportswriters and other cricketers of Dravid’s era as to why he was successful, the consensus view was that “Dravid succeeds because he keeps it simple”. So, if it is so easy to succeed by keeping it simple, why don’t more cricketers do it? Why is ‘simple’ not easy?"

Came across this blog titled "What Investors Can Learn From Rahul Dravid" by Marcellus Investment Managers and really enjoyed the read. Reminded me of something similar I read years ago on the Rahul Dravid Model of Management. Growing up in a family that loves cricket, I've always loved Rahul Dravid as a force of calmness and dependendability, who keeps things simple.

Not just cricket and investing, but in everything - new projects at work, narrative writing or even parenting, keeping it simple is the hardest. And, with highest chances of success. And that's why Dravid is a case study in genius. Some key takeaways for me from this read.

1. There's no shortcut. It takes years of practice.

Dravid’s training and his basic mental conditioning started when he was around eight years old. As the years went by and as Dravid rose up the cricketing pantheon, his mental conditioning techniques were perfected to a high level of proficiency

2. Learning from mistakes.

He is known not to make the same mistake twice. Dravid sought feedback from peers and introspected on this to understand his weaknesses. Then he figured out technical solutions to these weaknesses using his cricketing intelligence and then spent hundreds of hours at the nets fixing these issues. Finally, he implemented these technical fixes in live cricket matches against high quality opposition.

3. A willingness to keep learning.

Greg Chappell, who was India’s coach for much of Dravid’s tenure as captain of the Indian team from 2005-07, said, “Rahul is an avid reader, who reads in the search of knowledge with which to improve himself. He is a like a child in that he constantly asks questions and then asks why when you give him an answer…In that way, he was eminently coachable. He could take concepts and turn them into action because of his intelligence and a strong belief in his ability.