The Hindu Business Line : Techies' 11

Chennai's M.A. Chidambaram Stadium was surprisingly busy that Saturday afternoon. Saurav Ganguly's men weren't there; they were plundering the Pakistani attack around that time in Kochi.

Neither was it a Ranji match, which barely manages to attract cricket enthusiasts by the hundreds, not the thousands that had gathered that day.

The crowd was for cricket, all right. And it was unanimous in its cheer for a single team: Cognizant Technology Solutions.

The occasion: `Cricnizant,' a two-day event in which six teams from the company offices in five cities battled it out. Two teams from Chennai, and one each from Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune and Kolkata were chosen in an elaborate exercise spanning over three months.

For instance, match after match was played in Chennai to select the top two among the 130 teams that registered for the knockout tournament.

"Cricket is part of the DNA of the organisation," says R. Chandrasekaran, Managing Director and Executive Vice-President. Seems so! Nearly half of Cognizant's 11,000 employees in India play the game.

After the selection, regular net sessions were organised at different venues to gear up for the big occasion. So, on D-day, the IT men looked at ease with their drives and deliveries.

Those who didn't make it to the hallowed turf of the Chepauk stadium plunged themselves into managing the operation. Forty buses plied during the event to ferry spectators to and from the stadium, 150 employees from outside the city had to be taken care of, and there was plenty of entertainment inside the stadium in the form of game stalls. The action was also captured live on TV sets inside the stadium.

"Nobody was told what to do. Everybody understood their tasks," says Muthu Kumaran, Senior Manager-Projects, who was part of the Chennai B team that lost in the finals to Hyderabad.

The players "got an opportunity to showcase their talent." And what a stage they had to do that! It was the first time they were playing cricket in an international stadium, under floodlights (a privilege that even India and Pakistan haven't got this summer!), overseen by a third-umpire, and in front of such a big crowd.

Muthu Kumaran cites competitiveness and teamwork as the most significant features of the tournament. "It is said that CEOs build relationships and make their decisions while playing golf. In our case, cricket could play that role," he says.

Cognizant has had a tradition for conducting such big events. Years ago, it took around 800 people on a Caribbean cruise. It also organises regular cultural events but none is as sustained as Cricnizant; "it reinforces the idea of bonding much better," says R. Ramkumar, Director, Corporate Marketing and Communications.

Chandrasekaran says the company doesn't want to think about just work. "There are bonding opportunities, where people come to know each other irrespective of their ranks. It so happened that one of the initiatives is cricket."

Cricket, he says, probably took off because there are capable players in the company, some of whom still play league cricket. The rest are just passionate. As Ramkumar says, "Most of us would have been happy just getting an opportunity to field in such a venue."

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