Sport mirrors life. There’s a lot more to sport, than what the television broadcasters offer us, and I’ve always looked at sports as an invaluable medium to inculcate life lessons. A lot of stories today – all from sporting careers. And a lot to learn. There’s an African, a Brit, a Pakistani and a New Zealand national – no world beaters as such, but winners in a not so usual a contest.

Collins Obuya is your average frail Kenyan who looked like he’d blown away by Shaun Tait’s bouncers in a recent World Cup encounter. Obuya burst onto the scene in the 2003 World Cup and impressed all with his leg spinners. He picked up 13 wickets at an average 28.76 in the 2003 World Cup and took a career best 5 for 24 in Kenya’s win over Sri Lanka at Nairobi. Hailed as the successor to Asif Karim, Obuya was touted as the best young spinner in Africa. His stellar performances earned him a contract with Warwickshire in the English League. In the months to follow, the ball just wouldn’t turn for Obuya. He faced health issues, his bowling deteriorated and he couldn’t buy a wicket.  Obuya has thirty ODI wickets to his name. He had 25 till 2003, which means he’s picked up five wickets in the last seven years, after earning his contract with Warwickshire. To much surprise, Obuya has played in both the 2007 and 2011 World Cups. Not as a leg spinner, but as a specialized middle order batsman. Obuya is Kenya’s highest run-getter in the 2011 World Cup with a healthy average of 48.60, scoring a 98* against the mighty Australians.

James Franklin made his Test debut in 2000 when he played as a seamer against Pakistan. He scored a pair (zero runs in either innings) to kick start his Test Career. For the last three years, he has been a permanent fixture in New Zealand’s batting order. In his first year in international cricket, he had a batting average of 7. He averages 54 in one day internationals played in 2011. Franklin suffered a knee injury in 2006-07 and was never the same bowler. That he switched his core competency from being a bowler to a batsmen given the circumstances, is what still guarantees him a spot in the Kiwi side.

The highest wicket taker in the 2011 World Cup is our very own Shahid Bhai. With twenty one wickets to his name, he’s outperformed stalwarts like Muralidaran and Harbhajan Singh. The problem is that he started his career as an opening batsman, some twelve years ago. Afridi was ferocious with the bat in the late nineties. Aged 16 years and 217 days, Afridi became the youngest player to score an ODI century. In his first international innings, Afridi broke the record for fastest century in ODI cricket, reaching his hundred from 37 balls. The eleven sixes he struck also equalled the record for most in an ODI innings. Batting was his calling or so it seemed. Sometime in the middle of the last decade, he was found out by international bowlers. And runs came to trickle. His technique and approach was not good enough to merit him a spot in the team as a specialized batter. He had to develop his bowling to remain a part of the Pakistan side. As things stand currently, Shahid Afridi is Pakistan’s most successful spinner. His 313 ODI wickets make him Pakistan’s third highest wicket taker behind Wasim and Waqar. Not bad for a Pathan, for whom batting was his ‘true calling’.

Rebecca Romero has two Olympic medals – a Silver in 2004 and a Gold in 2008. What makes it special is that the 2004 medal was won in Rowing and the 2008 triumph was in cycling. A champion rower – she won a silver medal at the Athens 2004 Olympics in the quadruple sculls, and the following year was part of the British crew that won the 2005 World Championships in the quad sculls. In 2006, she quit rowing due to a chronic back problem. But she couldn’t give up her love for sport and the stomach for a fight. She took up cycling and made rapid advances. The individual gold at the Beijing Olympic was her crowning glory.

We have been told a lot of times, stories of companies going out of business as they failed to embrace change, failed to adapt themselves with the need of the markets and the consumers, failed to innovate. A lot of corporate branding has to do with change and dynamism as well. More importantly, a lot of careers hit a roadblock, when the employee fails to reinvent himself in the workspace.

How difficult is it to reinvent yourself professionally? Suppose an employee working at a desk for four years just realises that his core skills are no longer good enough to sustain him in the market. What does he do? Surely, pick up something else. That he can’t afford to given that he is so highly leveraged is another issue altogether.

Why are certain people able to reinvent themselves faster and more peacefully than others? How can Sachin Tendulkar rule over all three versions of cricket, whereas most others invariably restrict themselves to one form? Anurag Behar, in his latest column talks about two extremes in philosophy of education – “the liberal educationist” and “the instrumental educationist”. He says -

The “liberal educationist” believes in education for its own sake: That only learning anchored in deep thoughts and broad perspectives can be called education; that stoking the thirst for knowledge is sufficient to handle life. To him, thinking of how education can prepare someone for a vocation is somewhere between ludicrous and sacrilegious.

The “instrumental educationist” wants the child to prepare for employment— the earlier the better. After all, the real purpose of education is generating livelihood—everything must be aligned to that. Skills and knowledge relevant to employment must be central to the curriculum. In this view, the ability to think critically, perspectives about society and scientific understanding of nature are somewhere between distractions and unaffordable luxuries.

As graduates in India, the focus on instrumental education is very high. Liberal views are not valued by the system, peers or examiners. The current focus of Indian education, especially IT, is on vocation, which aims at transforming lifestyle and eating habits more than anything else. There is no impetus for thought per se, and the confluence of thoughts from various walks of life. And this method of learning perhaps, is what makes most Indian graduates very rigid; very inflexible. Because most students are taught to study for a particular vocation, it becomes difficult to change career tracks at a later stage. Most of us join engineering because a mediocre engineer earns more than a mediocre lawyer or a mediocre artist or a mediocre footballer or a mediocre keyboard player or a mediocre ballet dancer.

Say you are the 256,443 rd best engineer in the country. You’d still be having a six digit annual salary. And a 256,443 rd best physiotherapist in this country would be jobless. The problem is that they day India needs 256,442 skilled engineers, you’ll have nowhere to go, if your education has not been a marriage of the the two extremes mentioned above.

Realising that your core skills which you’ve been nurturing for more than half a decade, are not good enough for the marketplace, can be a very damning experience. But as a lot of sportspersons have showed, it’s not the end of the world. With the right mentality and “soft skills” or “soft attributes”, mastering another domain or vocation, is not really out of reach. Viren Rasquinha captained the Indian hockey team and then studied management and currently heads the operations of the Olympic Gold Quest. So, if you are 21, and totally out of sync with your current vocation/training, all’s not lost. The Governor of the Reserve Bank of this country is a production engineering graduate. Take heart. Have patience. Strengthen your “non-functional” skill base. Vocation training is easy.