Ravi Shastri backing Jasprit Bumrah

    How Ravi Shastri's positive expectations turned a raw, unorthodox Jasprit Bumrah into one of India's leading fast bowlers — and what it teaches every leader about developing others.

    Ravi Shastri backing Jasprit Bumrah

    Ravi Shastri backing Jasprit Bumrah: the leadership lesson in Developing Others

    When Jasprit Bumrah walked into the Indian dressing room, he did not look like a finished fast bowler. His action was unorthodox, his run-up short and jerky by classical standards, and plenty of old-school observers were ready to write him off as a T20 gimmick who would not survive Test cricket. Ravi Shastri, the team's head coach, looked at the same young man and saw something else — raw pace, a rare skiddy trajectory, and a temperament that did not rattle under pressure. He chose to back him. That one decision, repeated in a hundred small ways over several years, is one of the clearest real-world demonstrations of what I call Developing Others — Trait #15 in the Empathy cluster of the Winning Kite.

    In short

    Where this sits on your Winning Kite

    Every one of the twenty-five EQ traits I teach sits inside the Winning Kite (KITE Leadership Framework) — the four-sided kite where EQ forms the left panel, RQ the right, PQ the base, and Success the point you fly toward at the top. Developing Others is Trait #15, filed under the Empathy cluster of EQ. A leader who is only good at managing their own emotions but never invests in growing the people around them will still see their kite sag on one side. Bumrah's story is a live case study of what happens when a leader gets this trait right.

    The coach who saw a strike bowler where others saw a risk

    Ravi Shastri became the Indian cricket team's head coach at a time when Jasprit Bumrah was still a young and largely unproven talent — a white-ball specialist whose action broke every textbook rule taught in Indian cricket academies. Bowling coaches around the country had spent decades correcting exactly the kind of load-up and arm angle Bumrah bowled with. It would have been easy, and defensible, for Shastri to ask Bumrah to "fix" his action before trusting him with a bigger role.

    Shastri did not do that. Instead of criticising Bumrah for what he lacked, Shastri decided to have positive expectations of him and to provide him with the necessary support and guidance to become better at what he already did well. He encouraged Bumrah to work on his specific weaknesses — control in the death overs, his lengths in Test match conditions, his fitness for longer spells — without asking him to sand down the very things that made him unique. The message to Bumrah was not "become a normal fast bowler." It was "become the best version of the fast bowler you already are."

    That backing paid off. Bumrah went on to become one of India's leading fast bowlers across all three formats — a bowler opposition batters plan entire innings around, a yorker specialist in the death overs, and eventually a Test spearhead who could dismantle top-order batting line-ups overseas. None of that happens if the first serious coach he works under decides his rough edges are disqualifying rather than developable.

    The Pygmalion Effect: why belief changes performance

    This story is not a one-off coincidence. It sits inside a well-documented pattern that I teach as the Pygmalion Effect in every session on developing others. The Pygmalion Effect states that when leaders hold high expectations of the people who report to them, those people are more likely to perform at a higher level. It is not magic — it works because a leader who genuinely believes in someone changes their own behaviour: they give that person more airtime, more challenging assignments, more patient feedback, and more of the benefit of the doubt during a rough patch. The person on the receiving end feels that shift and rises to meet it.

    Shastri is far from the only Indian cricket coach who has demonstrated this. Anil Kumble, when he took over as head coach of the Indian cricket team in 2016, faced a different but related challenge in Ravichandran Ashwin. Ashwin was going through a rough patch with his consistency and accuracy, and the easy option would have been to drop him or publicly question his form. Kumble chose the harder, more generous path: he spent hours with Ashwin, analysing his strengths and weaknesses together, and encouraged him to keep working on his variations rather than abandoning his method. In a match against England where Ashwin was visibly struggling, Kumble simply walked up to him and told him to stay calm and focus on his strengths. In the very next match, Ashwin delivered a match-winning performance, taking six wickets and helping India win the game. Positive expectation, backed by specific and patient support, turned a slump into a career-defining spell.

    The pattern repeats with Shane Warne, who was appointed captain of the Rajasthan Royals in the very first edition of the IPL in 2008 — a squad nobody rated as a strong side on paper. Warne's real contribution was not just tactics; it was clarity. He took the time to understand each player's individual strengths and weaknesses and assigned clear roles accordingly: he asked opener Swapnil Asnodkar to bat aggressively and keep the strike rate high, while he asked Graeme Smith to anchor the innings with a more cautious approach. Every player in that dressing room knew exactly what was expected of them and could focus entirely on their own job. Rajasthan Royals went on to win that first IPL. Years later, MS Dhoni did something similar with Chennai Super Kings in IPL 2023, communicating roles and expectations with such clarity that players like Shivam Dube and Ajinkya Rahane were freed to perform exceptionally within a well-defined brief.

    How to actually develop others — not just say you believe in them

    In my corporate sessions, I break Developing Others down into practical, repeatable steps, because "believe in your people" on its own is a poster line, not a leadership behaviour.

    I have seen this play out in my own life too. In 2013, I was an average student with little confidence in my own abilities, until I met my guru, Mr. Kaustubh. He looked at me and said, in Hindi, "Kya personality hai tera, tu to kuch bhi kar sakta hai" — what a personality you have, you can do anything. One line, spoken with conviction by someone I respected, shifted something in how I saw myself. That belief, backed later by his guidance and mentorship, is a large part of why I became an entrepreneur and corporate trainer today. Positive expectation from someone who matters to you is not a soft skill on the side — it can be the hinge a whole career turns on.

    Why this belongs on the EQ side of your Winning Kite

    Psychologist Daniel Goleman's research on emotional intelligence long ago established that a leader's ability to read and lift the people around them is inseparable from their own self-awareness — you cannot develop others well if you cannot first manage your own reactions to their mistakes. I build on that idea inside the Winning Kite: Developing Others sits in the Empathy cluster on the EQ (left) side, but it never works in isolation. It needs RQ (the right side of the kite) to build the trust that makes feedback land, and it needs PQ (the base) to translate belief into structured coaching plans and real deadlines. Shastri's backing of Bumrah worked because it combined all three — emotional belief, a relationship strong enough to carry hard feedback, and the discipline to keep showing up with support match after match, series after series.

    That is the real takeaway for any manager reading this in a corporate context, not just a cricket one. The junior analyst whose presentation style is rough but whose thinking is sharp. The salesperson who closes deals in an unconventional way that makes the sales-ops team uncomfortable. The engineer who writes code differently but ships fewer bugs than anyone else on the team. Somewhere in your team right now, there is a Bumrah — someone whose unpolished edges are making you miss the raw talent underneath. The question Shastri's story leaves you with is simple: are you coaching them to fit a template, or are you developing the specific, unusual strength they already have?

    If you want to go deeper into how Developing Others connects to the other twenty-four EQ traits, and how EQ, RQ and PQ come together to hold up Success, explore the full Winning Kite (KITE Leadership Framework). And if you are building this into a live session for your leadership team, browse our corporate training topics or the Signature Programs built around these exact chapters of Stars at India Inc.

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    Avinash Chate

    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 Ravi Shastri do differently with Jasprit Bumrah?

    Instead of criticising Bumrah's unusual action and raw technique, Ravi Shastri chose to have positive expectations of him, gave him the support and guidance to work on his weaknesses, and backed him with responsibility. That backing helped Bumrah develop into one of India's leading fast bowlers.

    What is the Pygmalion Effect in leadership?

    The Pygmalion Effect is the finding that when leaders hold high, positive expectations of their people and communicate belief in them, those people tend to perform at a higher level. Positive expectation, paired with real support, becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy for growth.

    Where does Developing Others sit on the Winning Kite?

    Developing Others is Trait #15 on the EQ (Emotional Intelligence) side — the left panel of the Winning Kite — under the Empathy cluster. It works together with RQ and PQ traits to hold up Success at the top of the kite.

    How can a manager apply the Ravi Shastri approach at work?

    Recognise the person's raw strength before judging their rough edges, say your belief in them out loud, give them a real role and real responsibility (not just a pep talk), and stay patient while they work on one weakness at a time — the way Shastri stayed with Bumrah through his early, error-strewn overs.

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