What A good sport!

Sanjay Jha, Director, Dale Carnegie Training Institute, shows off his cricket collectibles over lessons in team spirit.

A sportsman must, presumably, be a good sport. And Sanjay Jha, executive director of Dale Carnegie Training, is. Asked to strike a pose for the camera, he good-naturedly mimics a batting stroke or two, with what used to be Ricky Ponting's choice of willow. As the founder and managing editor of Cricketnext.com (he has not one, but two careers) his proclivity for the game of cricket is any fool's guess.

That he seized the opportunity when commercial interest in the game was peaking meant that this former nine-to-six banking professional ended up turning a hobby into a winning career proposition. It was 2000 "" the worst of the dotcom scare was over, Internet technology was maturing, and Tendulkar was a superstar.

"Financial valuations must have been really high for me to be able to raise US$ 2.5 million through equity funding for a business dedicated to a 24/7 online coverage of cricket," he says almost incredulously.

Cricketnext had its teething troubles. It was only five years after it was set up that the site, now unofficially acknowledged as the second-best Indian cricketing website, broke even.

"Every Internet business that hung on, even by a thread, has gone on to make money," he says proudly. Jha is gracious about second place. "Cricinfo.com had a time lead on us. They're the conservative, older voice; we're the more frothy and irreverent." With the sale of a majority stake to TV18 last year, Jha knows sustainability is no longer the yoke around his neck.

So that part of his attention is now being absorbed by his professional training institute where he leads strategy development and brand positioning. On the cards is a finishing school in Bangalore for undergraduates and graduates to fill the soft skills training void that professional educational institutions leave behind.

"We're always dwarfed by the next man who can speak English well and wears a pinstriped suit," he explains. "The gap in employment these days lies not in numbers but the quality of numbers. Why should a student not get a job because while he is technically proficient he lacks the social skill set to conduct himself during the interview?" he continues.

Jha is always ready to spot the lack of an otherwise indefinable competitive edge. "Have you thought of why Indians are better at individual competitive sports than team sports? It's because we aren't naturally team players. And that our mental make-up lacks the guts to slug it out till the end," he explains. And that explains why the Aussies are his favourite team.

He doesn't actually get to play the sport any more, although tennis gets his attention three times a week. A large replica of a Roland Garros-branded tennis ball sits in his office.

He was an off-spinner and an opening batsman for his college cricket team: "That isn't as much a reflection of how good I was as it is my impatient personality; I couldn't wait to be called out onto the field." A newspaper article cutting has been saved to point out his personal best "" four wickets for 13 runs at a local corporate cricket challenge.

Much of his souvenir collection is made up of purchases from auctions. Dear among them are oil paintings of Don Bradman by an artist commissioned by the Bradman family. Ricky Ponting used to be Cricketnext's brand ambassador, so his endorsement is scrawled across various souvenirs.

Signed mini bat replicas are aplenty, there is an autographed photograph of the winning Indian team from the 1983 Lords World Cup, and on a wall in the corner are framed the original lyrics and piano score of "A snappy fox trot song" composed in 1932 for Bradman.

On another wall is one of Jha's personal favourites "" a framed set of wicket-keeper gloves and two balls, titled 'The World's Best Partnership' and signed by their previous owners "" Ian Healy, Shane Warne, Rodney Marsh and Dennis Lillee. "Items like this become priceless very quickly," he offers up when asked to place a value on it. But he's not selling.

In fact, he has set himself the goal of collecting three exclusive items each year. High on that list is a pair of sneakers owned by Federer. Jha just lost out on an eBay auction where Kim Clijster's racket from her 2005 US Open win went under the virtual hammer.

A meandering discussion on the state of Indian football and hockey takes us to what seems to be on everybody's favourite movie list, Chak De! "The film teaches you that the only way to win in a team is to look beyond yourself, the protagonist's character is always a step behind," he explains. Its not hard to see why Jha loved the film: it indulges his first love "" sport "" and what sits at the bedrock of his other career "" soft skills!