Hardik Pandya – 2017 Champions Trophy & composure

    At 72 for 6 in a Champions Trophy final, Hardik Pandya didn't panic — he counter-attacked. I use his innings, and the way he handled criticism three years later, to teach why composure is the communication skill every leader underrates.

    Hardik Pandya – 2017 Champions Trophy & composure

    Hardik Pandya – 2017 Champions Trophy & composure

    On 18 June 2017, India was 72 for 6 in the Champions Trophy final against Pakistan — a batting collapse in the biggest match of the calendar, with the whole country watching. A 23-year-old Hardik Pandya walked out and did something most of us would find impossible: he played fearless, attacking cricket, as if the scoreboard didn't exist. That single innings, and the way he handled a very different kind of pressure three years later, is one of the clearest lessons I use in my corporate workshops on why composure is the communication skill that decides whether you're trusted with hard conversations.

    In short

    Where this sits on your Winning Kite

    Composure under pressure is part of Trait #19, Communication — the ability to send and receive messages clearly even when emotions are running high. That places it on the EQ (left) side of your Winning Kite (KITE Leadership Framework). EQ is one of three sides — alongside RQ (relationships) and PQ (productivity) — that together lift the kite toward Success. A leader who is technically brilliant but loses composure under fire will keep crashing the kite in exactly the moments that matter most.

    72 for 6: the situation nobody wants to walk into

    Cricket fans will tell you there is no worse position to bat in than a Champions Trophy final, chasing pressure, against Pakistan, with your team's top order back in the pavilion. India had lost six wickets for just 72 runs. The commentary box was already writing India's eulogy. This is the equivalent, in corporate life, of walking into a board meeting after your team has just lost the flagship account, with your own numbers not looking great either, and every eye in the room turning to you for what happens next.

    Hardik Pandya came to the crease in that exact moment. He did not play the situation the way convention would suggest — head down, survive, rebuild slowly. He played fearless, attacking cricket: sixes, fours, shots that most batsmen would never attempt with six wickets down. He helped India climb from a collapse to 158, a total that gave India's bowlers something to defend. Even though the situation was about as stressful as cricket gets, Pandya stayed calm. He showed no signs of nervousness or panic. His shot selection was decisive, not reckless — the product of a mind that was clear, not a mind that was scared.

    This is the part I keep coming back to in my sessions: composure under pressure does not mean playing safe. It means playing your actual game, undistorted by fear. Pandya didn't shrink the moment — he met it on his own terms. That is the difference between a leader who freezes in a crisis meeting and one who still makes the right call, even an aggressive one, because their judgment hasn't been hijacked by adrenaline.

    "Captain Cool" is usually Dhoni's title — Pandya earned it too

    MS Dhoni is famous, almost globally, as Captain Cool — the man whose pulse apparently never changed whether India was winning or losing. But Pandya, in this innings and later in his career, showed the same underlying quality. People who can remain collected in an emergency, or in the face of someone else's panic or distress, carry a reassuring sense of self-control. They enter smoothly into a conversation and stay effectively involved, rather than becoming unavailable or distracted because their own emotions have taken over. This is a trait admired worldwide precisely because it is rare — most people, under real pressure, do the opposite. They tighten up, go quiet, or lash out.

    In the professional world, this ability to regulate your emotions and stay level-headed in high-pressure situations is one of the most valued and least common leadership qualities. It's what allows you to stay in a difficult conversation instead of ending it early, to hear a client's anger without matching it, and to keep steering a meeting that has started to go sideways.

    Composure off the field: the 2020 controversy

    Pandya's composure was not limited to the cricket pitch. In 2020, he and a teammate faced significant public backlash after making controversial comments on a television talk show. The media scrutiny was intense — this was not a cricketing failure, it was a personal and reputational crisis playing out in full public view, the kind of situation that tempts most people into defensiveness, deflection, or silence.

    Pandya stayed calm and collected through the criticism. He issued a public apology and said he would learn from his mistakes. He did not fight the narrative, did not double down, did not disappear. He absorbed the criticism, took ownership, and moved forward. That same year, after facing pointed criticism for inconsistent performances in the IPL, he focused on self-improvement and mental strength rather than reacting to the noise — and went on to become one of that tournament's standout players. Growth, in his case, came through awareness rather than defensiveness: he didn't react to the criticism, he rebuilt from it, and by the next season he was leading with the same calm that had once been just a batting trait.

    This is the same underlying skill as the 72-for-6 innings, applied to a completely different kind of pressure. On the field, composure meant playing without fear. Off the field, it meant responding to criticism without ego. Both are Trait #19 in action — communication that survives contact with a high-emotion situation.

    What the research says about calm communicators

    This isn't just a cricket story — it's backed by real workplace research. A study of middle and upper-level managers found that those rated best as communicators shared one specific ability: to adopt a calm, composed, and patient manner, no matter what emotional state they were actually in internally. These managers could put aside the imperatives of their own feelings, even when turbulent, in order to make themselves fully available for the person in front of them. They exercised emotional control — staying open to what they were hearing instead of shutting down or overreacting — and fine-tuned their responses to the specific person and moment, rather than applying a one-size-fits-all reaction. This gave them the time and headspace to gather essential information and find a genuinely helpful response, including delivering constructive feedback that actually landed instead of triggering defensiveness. This idea echoes what Daniel Goleman has written about emotional self-regulation being a core pillar of emotional intelligence — the capacity to manage disruptive impulses so they don't manage you.

    Here's a distinction worth sitting with: being outgoing and extroverted does not automatically make someone a good communicator. Plenty of confident, talkative people fall apart the moment real pressure or real criticism enters the room. What works in one situation might completely fail in another — the manager who is charming at the sales pitch may be the same person who goes silent or defensive in a performance review. Composure is not a personality type. It's a discipline you practise, situation after situation, until it becomes your default response instead of your rare good day.

    Where I see this missing in Indian corporate life

    In my sessions with leadership teams across manufacturing plants, government offices, and corporate India, I watch this play out constantly. A manager gets challenged in a review meeting and the tone shifts instantly — voice rises, body language closes, and the meeting stops being a conversation and becomes a contest. A team lead receives sharp feedback from a client and either goes silent for the rest of the call or fires back defensively in the follow-up email. In both cases, the underlying skill gap is identical to what Pandya demonstrated twice, on and off the field: the ability to keep functioning, keep listening, keep responding thoughtfully, exactly when the emotional temperature spikes.

    The leaders I've trained who handle this best don't suppress the emotion — they don't pretend the collapse to 72 for 6 isn't happening. They simply don't let the emotion make the decision for them. They separate what happened from who they are. A bad quarter, a public criticism, a tense confrontation with a colleague — none of it is a verdict on your worth, only information about the current situation. That reframe alone changes how quickly someone can recover their composure.

    How to build this as a trainable skill

    Composure is not a fixed trait some people are born with and others aren't — it is built the same way a batsman builds a technique, through repetition and deliberate practice. Three things I coach leaders on: First, name the emotion before you respond — silently identifying "I am feeling attacked right now" creates a half-second gap between the trigger and your reaction, and that gap is where composure lives. Second, build a personal reset ritual — a slow breath, a sip of water, a pause before replying to a heated email — something small and repeatable that you can deploy the instant you feel your temperature rising. Third, rehearse your hardest conversations in advance, mentally walking through how you want to respond if the other person gets aggressive or dismissive, so that in the real moment you are executing a plan rather than improvising a reaction. This connects to what Carol Dweck describes as a growth mindset — treating a wobble under pressure as a skill to develop rather than a fixed deficiency you're stuck with.

    None of this makes the pressure disappear. Pandya was still batting at 72 for 6. The stakes were still real. What changes is whether the pressure controls you or you control your response to it. That's the whole difference between a leader people trust in a crisis and one they quietly work around.

    If you're building this capability across your team, I run structured sessions on Communication and Emotional Regulation as part of my Signature Corporate Training Programs, and you can explore the full trait library under Corporate Training Topics. To understand exactly how Communication fits alongside the other 24 traits, see the Winning Kite (KITE Leadership Framework) pillar page.

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    TEDx Speaker · Founder, The Future Corporate · Author of Stars at India Inc.

    Avinash has trained the Indian Army, BRO, RBI, BARC, JSW Steel and 1000+ corporate leaders across India. His work focuses on leadership, emotional intelligence and behavioural training rooted in Indian values and modern business needs.

    Frequently Asked Questions

    What did Hardik Pandya do in the 2017 Champions Trophy final?

    With India struggling at 72 for 6 against Pakistan, Hardik Pandya walked in and played a fearless, attacking innings full of sixes and fours, helping India reach a competitive total of 158 without ever looking rattled by the situation.

    Why is Hardik Pandya compared to 'Captain Cool'?

    MS Dhoni earned the 'Captain Cool' tag for his calm under pressure. Pandya showed the same quality both on the field, in the 2017 final, and off it, in 2020, when he stayed composed and issued a measured apology instead of reacting defensively to public criticism.

    What does composure have to do with communication skills?

    Composure is what allows you to actually listen and respond thoughtfully instead of reacting. Research on top managers shows the best communicators share one trait: the ability to stay calm and patient regardless of their internal emotional state, which keeps them open to what the other person is saying.

    How can I build composure as a leader on the EQ side of the Winning Kite?

    Start by naming your emotional state before you respond to pressure, build a personal reset ritual (a pause, a breath, a walk), and separate the event from your identity — criticism of one decision is not a verdict on your worth. This is trained, not innate, and it sits inside Communication on the EQ side of the Winning Kite.

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