by Berend Booms, Associate Editor, Future of Assets

The first time I played cricket, I had no idea what I was doing. It was the year 2000, and I was visiting England and staying with a host family. Their house was in this cul-de-sac, and most days, I would play outside on the streets. One day, a group of kids asked if I wanted to play. Slightly out of my depth in this new environment, I was promptly handed a bat, pointed in a direction, and made part of whatever was about to happen. 

The pitch was improvised with chalk lines on the concrete. I must have been the only one oblivious to the rules; everyone else was quick to take up positions and start playing. Even without an understanding of the rules, I sensed that this was a sport with a certain gravity to it – a set of invisible lines beyond the ones chalked on the ground. All the kids had their own bats and protective gear, most of them very serious about winning. While exerting effort to figure out how this game worked, I was also enjoying myself, because the joy of the game was clear even if the rules were not. The sound of the ball striking the bat carried a rhythm, the run-up of the bowler was charged with anticipation, and the collective appeal when a wicket was taken almost had a theatrical quality to it. Looking back, I now appreciate that you don’t always need full understanding to feel the essence of something. Sometimes you just need to be inside it long enough to recognize that it has rhythm. And even if you don’t understand the mechanics, you can recognize the underlying structure. 

Back at The Crease 

I returned home from England and my thoughts of cricket faded until 2008, when I was reintroduced to it in a way that permanently anchored the sport in my memory. I was travelling through India, and I saw a group of guys playing in a park. I sat down to watch them play and within minutes, one of the players approached me and asked if I wanted to join. They very kindly explained the basics to me on the spot. It was the kind of living explanation of what to do (“hit the ball and run”) and what not to do (“don’t place your leg in front of the wicket”) that has you going to bat before you know it, and I loved every second of it. What struck me was how the lack of formal infrastructure compared to my earlier games in England did not reduce the quality of the experience in any meaningful way. 

In England, I had played on a level, concrete ground with neatly chalked out boundaries; in India, the pitch was drawn out in the sand. In England, all the kids had their own bats and protection; in India, we shared a single bat, a single ball, and a makeshift wicket. But despite those differences, the joy in playing was exactly the same. For me, cricket has never been just about the game; it’s also about connection, about how quickly strangers can become teammates, and how a simple structure can create belonging. 

Third Time at the Wicket 

A few years later, in 2011, I was working as an account manager in an IT company. I had just finished my bachelor’s degree, and was going to start my master’s degree the following year. The company I worked for was a mosaic of nationalities and perspectives, and cricket one of the threads that stitched those differences together. That year’s World Cup became a shared reference point that I vividly remember, not just because of the games, but also because of the characters. For me, cricket is a sport that is built for storytelling. It has time for narrative, it has room for momentum shifts, and there are rivalries and redemption arcs that make just about any match interesting to watch. The players themselves, at least in my memory of that time, were highly fascinating. 

Australia with Ricky Ponting, composed with an aura of authority. Pakistan under Shahid Afridi’s captaincy, unpredictable in the kind of way that makes a team simultaneously dangerous and fragile. The bowling brilliance of Lasith Malinga, and his famous “Malinga slinga” action that looked like it was breaking several rules of physics. And the iconic Indian team that would go on to win it all, with Sachin Tendulkar already a legend, alongside the cool-headed MS Dhoni and a still-young Virat Kohli, already radiating the intensity that now defines him as a player.  

Recently, I found myself revisiting those feelings after watching the 2026 T20 World Cup, which, like the 2011 edition, was played in India and Sri Lanka, and ended with the same winner: India. There was something almost poetic about the symmetry, because it reminded me how certain moments in life form a loop. Watching this year’s T20 World Cup made me think about more than my love for the game. It brought back a flood of memories: sitting in that office in 2011 and talking about our favorite players; standing in that dusty park in India in 2008 and beginning to understand the rules; trying to hit my first ball in England in 2000 and being unsure what “out” meant. Because of this trip down memory lane, I also began to think about what cricket represents to me which, at its core, is about systems and teamwork. 

From the Pitch to the Plant 

In a very structural sense, I believe cricket is one of the ultimate team sports. While usually only a selection of the squad bats, once the sides switch, everyone fields. There are of course specializations in both batting and fielding, but success in cricket is still a collective outcome. Having brilliant bowlers doesn’t matter if your fielding leaks runs. If your batters post a competitive target score but your bowling is lacklustre, you will lose. If one fielder shines but the rest drift, you won’t win a trophy, because that one person can’t be everywhere at once. Asset management works in the same way, and suffers many of the same pitfalls.  

We are sometimes tempted to attribute success to singular expertise: the exceptional reliability engineer, that one senior technician that can diagnose a fault by sound alone, or the visionary planner. While those individuals matter tremendously, assets do not respond to talent in isolation. They experience the combined effect of how the entire system behaves: how it is operated, how it is maintained, how it is inspected, how risks are understood, and how trade-offs are made. In other words, the asset thrives on the team performance. 

A planner can be the equivalent of a steady opening batter: they are setting the pace, absorbing early chaos and creating a platform for a steady partnership. A technician, like a fast bowler, can change the game in moments, but needs support, rhythm, and the right conditions. Operations can be the fielding side of the equation: invisible when done well, painfully obvious when misaligned. Reliability engineering often plays the role of the strategist: reading patterns, adjusting tactics, deciding where risk can be carried and where it cannot. And leadership is like a captain who understands that the job is not to shine individually, but to orchestrate the best of everyone else. 

One aspect of cricket that I have grown to admire is the patience it takes, both to play and to watch. Test cricket in particular is a lesson in long-term planning and strategy. You do not win a single over; you build innings, you manage risk, and you adapt to the conditions when needed. You protect your wicket when needed, and you accelerate when the moment calls for it.  

Asset management has very similar dynamics. In asset-intensive industries, we are constantly balancing short-term pressures such as uptime and cost control with long-term stewardship. We need to decide when it makes sense to invest, when to defer, when to push for performance, and when to prioritize resilience. 

Cricket teaches something else that I find increasingly important when I think about the future of assets: the importance of tempo. In T20 cricket, tempo is everything. It’s not just about scoring runs; it’s about scoring runs at the right time, taking the right risks, and understanding how quickly conditions change. But even in this faster format, fundamentals still win tournaments. You need to remain disciplined in your bowling, display sharpness when fielding, have clear communication, and trust the other to do their job to the best of their abilities.  

Asset management is entering its own “T20 era” in some ways. The pace of technological change, the AI disruption at scale, the pressure to decarbonize, the workforce dynamics, the expectations of transparency and performance: just about everything feels faster, more compressed, and more intense. There is a very real temptation to swing at every ball, to run after every innovation, to treat every new tool as the thing that will finally make everything click, but just like in cricket, you still win by doing the basics extraordinarily well, and by doing them together as a team. 

System Performance is Key to Success 

When I watched India lift the trophy again in 2026, I mostly appreciated the cohesion they brought to the tournament. I recognize and respect the quiet, often invisible work of alignment that sits behind any team achievement; it’s the same feeling that I admire in teams that are really good at how they approach asset management. They are not at all obsessed with individual heroics, but highly respect system performance. For these teams, it is less about siloed excellence, and all about collective reliability. 

At the end of the day, whether you are in a stadium, in a park or on the streets playing cricket, or trying to keep critical assets running in a world that is changing faster than your processes were designed for, the principle remains the same. No matter how ambitious the target you are chasing, your success is never the sum of individual talent alone, but the product of how well your team moves as one.