Articles



KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT PRACTICES IN CRICKET
By
Manzur Ahmed
CEO of Brunei Darussalam Cricket Association
(Author has a long experience in the game of cricket as player and administrator. He is also an educator in Information Technology having qualification of Engineering and MBA)

Do the practices of knowledge management (KM) important to sports and particularly in cricket? Answer to this question is straight forward and it is 'yes' - reasons being sharing, managing and using knowledge are critical to spur innovation, to improve developments and to achieve operational excellence. Though the KM is a new field, I believe there is a tremendous value to the game of cricket that develop initiatives to share knowledge to achieve business objectives. In other words, a sport like cricket has significant opportunity to apply knowledge management practices to support every part of their operations.


Knowledge management is the process of transforming information and intellectual assets into enduring value. It connects people with knowledge that they need to take action, when they need it.


What is knowledge? The following figure gives a pictorial representation of knowledge development.


New Milestones


2006: First international tournament participation in ACC Trophy

2007: First participation of Under-15 tournament in ACC Challenge Cup

Brunei Darussalam Cricket Association has pioneered a form of coaching in Asia known as 'Level 0' - the basics for the base.
Yearly Cricket Events
 
  • Senior League
  • Twenty20 Tournament
  • T12 Tournament
  • U13 School Tournament

 
The above figure tells us knowledge is an important output of a process which may be tacit or explicit. However knowledge can be highly subjective and hard to codify. It includes the insight and wisdom of people involved in cricket organizations - starting from ground-men to players and technical staff and up to board/association executives.

Knowledge (as mentioned earlier) can be classified into:


" Explicit
" Tacit


Explicit knowledge is basically information in documented format. Few examples include strategies, rules, development plans of a board/association and video recording of a game. Explicit knowledge is:


" Formal
" Easily Codified
" Easily Communicable
" Easily Transferable


Tacit knowledge is know-how and learning embedded within the minds of the people in a board/association. It involves perceptions, insights, and experiences. Tacit knowledge is:


" Personal
" Context-specific
" Difficult to formalize
" Difficult to communicate
" Difficult to transfer

Knowledge Management Best Practices


1. Using technology to its maximum potential


Currently different technologies are used in cricket like video, simulation and web site for decision making and sharing of information. However, not all boards/associations use such technologies. The reasons may lack of understanding the power of these technologies in the development of the game or may be due to cost constraints. Furthermore, all the Web-based information sources in the world of cricket are static in nature. Thus, they do not serve as gateway that integrate collaborative tools and unstructured text search capabilities.


Few top cricket organizations can play a big role in deploying Web-based portals (intranet and extranet) to overcome the above constraints. The portal serves multiple functions for multiple stakeholders with one tool. For example, generation and exchange of knowledge among the boards/associations can be effective in expediting globalization of cricket.

2. Increasing use of knowledge management to enhance innovation and development


Knowledge management programs should not only focus on creating repositories for storing and diffusing best practices, focusing on operational excellence and cost reduction. It must break the cultural deficiencies of knowledge sharing and using them.


Cricket Australia is a good example that applies knowledge management to encourage innovation, development functions and operational excellence.

3. Increasing use of tacit knowledge


It is always easier to work with explicit knowledge than that of the tacit knowledge as the mechanism to manage explicit knowledge is well known. Again, explicit knowledge does not provide a long lasting competitive advantage. It is the ability to manage and use tacit knowledge that promises to deliver a huge leverage for cricket boards/associations. So, they must learn to use it effectively. For example, difference between a good performer and best performer in terms of cricketing nation is huge in today's world.


Boards/associations should learn to use the knowledge of all, inclusive past players, technical staff and organizers. Ignoring them will slow down the development processes. However, I must also mention that most business actions of cricket require the guidance of both explicit and tacit knowledge.

Benefit of Knowledge Management Practices


Using knowledge management effectively will benefit the cricket boards/associations in:


1. Increased competitiveness
2. Reduced administrative costs
3. Enhanced quality of development programs
4. Improved administrative services
5. Improved satisfaction and understanding among the stakeholders