Rinku Singh – Five Consecutive Sixes: The Goal-Setting Story Every Professional Should Know
In the last over of a 2023 IPL match, Rinku Singh hit five consecutive sixes to win an impossible game. I unpack what he actually did in his mind before that over, and how the same technique builds Productivity Quotient at work.
In the last over of an IPL match that Kolkata Knight Riders were losing, a young man from Aligarh hit five sixes in a row and won the impossible. I have used this story on stage more times than I can count — because what Rinku Singh did before that over matters far more than what he did during it, and that difference is the whole science of goal setting.
In short- In the 2023 IPL, Rinku Singh hit five consecutive sixes off the final over to win the match for Kolkata Knight Riders against Gujarat Titans.
- Before that over, he had written his aspiration — to be Man of the Match — on his own hand, mentally visualising the outcome again and again.
- This is not luck or "clutch gene" — it is the subconscious mind trained through repeated, specific visualisation until success feels familiar rather than foreign.
- Goal setting is Technique #1 of Productivity Quotient (PQ) — the base that gives your Winning Kite the thrust to fly.
- A goal is simply a dream with a deadline — and, as Rinku showed, a picture attached to it.
Where this sits on your Winning Kite
Every technique in Stars at India Inc. maps onto one side of what I call The Winning Kite (KITE Leadership Framework) — a four-sided kite where the top is Success, the left is EQ (Emotional Intelligence), the right is RQ (Relationship Intelligence), and the bottom is PQ (Productivity). Goal Setting is Technique #1 on the PQ — bottom — side. Think of PQ as the string tension that gives a kite its lift: however strong your EQ and RQ are, without a clear, well-set goal your kite simply will not rise. Rinku Singh's five sixes are, at their core, a PQ story: a goal so clearly defined that his mind executed it under maximum pressure.
The Match: Kolkata Knight Riders vs Gujarat Titans, 2023 IPL
Rinku Singh comes from Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh — a family that struggled financially for years. His father drove an LPG delivery van; the family lived through real hardship before cricket gave Rinku a way out. That backstory matters, because it tells you this wasn't a man who had the luxury of casual dreams. Every opportunity he got, he had to convert.
In the 2023 IPL season, playing for Kolkata Knight Riders, Rinku found himself in exactly the kind of moment careers are made or lost in. Facing Gujarat Titans, KKR needed a mountain of runs in the final over, with the game hanging in the balance. Most batters in that situation are playing not to lose — nudging singles, hoping for extras, praying the required rate softens. Rinku did the opposite. He took the bowler on, over after ball, and hit five consecutive sixes to snatch the match away from Gujarat Titans in the space of about ninety seconds. It remains one of the most replayed passages of play in IPL history — not because sixes are rare, but because five in a row, in a live chase, under that pressure, almost never happens.
Watch any slow-motion replay of that over and you will notice something: Rinku doesn't look surprised after any of the five sixes. There is no wide-eyed disbelief, no fist-pumping shock. His face has the calm of a man who has been here before — except he hadn't, not really. He had been here before only in his own head.
The Detail Everyone Skips: What Was Written on His Hand
This is the part of the story I always slow down on when I tell it in a training room, because it is the part that actually teaches you something you can use on Monday morning. Before that crucial match, Rinku Singh wrote his aspiration on his own hand — he visualised himself as the Man of the Match, and he wrote it down, literally on his skin, where he would see it before he walked out to bat.
That is not superstition. That is a deliberate act of goal setting. He didn't write "I hope we win" or "I'll try my best." He wrote a specific, named, personal outcome — Man of the Match — and he carried that picture with him onto the field. By the time the ball was bowled to him in that final over, his mind had already "seen" the outcome dozens of times. The physical act — the six itself — was simply the last step in a sequence his brain had rehearsed long before the bowler ran in.
This is exactly the same mechanism behind Roger Bannister's four-minute mile. In 1954, breaking a mile in under four minutes was considered a physiological impossibility — not a training problem, a belief problem. Bannister broke it in 3 minutes 59.4 seconds not purely through harder training, but through a focused mind that repeatedly visualised success until it stopped feeling impossible and started feeling inevitable. Within a year of Bannister's run, over 300 other runners broke the same "impossible" barrier — because the ceiling had only ever existed in the mind, not in the body. Rinku Singh's five sixes are India's cricketing version of that exact same psychological unlock.
Why "Hard Work Alone" Is the Wrong Lesson
When this story gets told casually, people reduce it to "he trained hard and got lucky." I want to push back on that, because it robs you of the actual lesson. Hard work and expert coaching absolutely mattered for both Bannister and Rinku — nobody hits five sixes on raw talent alone. But hard work was the floor, not the differentiator. Plenty of equally hard-working cricketers face similar final overs and don't produce that outcome. The differentiator was what happened in the mind before the body was ever tested: the training of the subconscious through repeated visualisation, until the emotions and sensations of victory were already familiar territory.
This is the single biggest misunderstanding about goal setting in the corporate world. We treat goals as targets we announce in a review meeting — "I will hit 120% of quota this quarter" — and then we go back to working exactly as we did before, hoping willpower fills the gap. Rinku's hand, with "Man of the Match" written on it, tells you goal setting is not an announcement. It is a rehearsal.
Dreams vs. Goals — The Distinction Rinku Lived Out
In the book, I draw a hard line between a dream and a goal. A dream sounds like "ek din main bahot bada aadmi banunga" or "apna time aayega" — inspiring, but with no deadline and no shape. A goal is a dream with a deadline. Rinku's story adds one more ingredient most people miss: a goal is a dream with a deadline and a picture. He didn't just decide "I want to perform well someday." He picked a specific match, a specific outcome, and wrote it where he could see it. That specificity is what separates the 3% from the 97%.
There is a well-known survey of Yale undergraduates that I quote often in my sessions: 90% of students had no specific career goals, 7% had vague ideas they never wrote down, and only 3% had documented, time-bound goals. Six to seven years later, that 3% had out-earned and out-achieved the other 97% combined. Rinku Singh, at the crease with Gujarat Titans bowling the last over, was operating exactly like that 3% — specific, written, visualised, deadline-bound (that over, that match, that night).
The Winning Kite Diagram
Notice where Goal Setting sits: right at the base of PQ, the bottom of the kite. A kite with a torn string at the bottom cannot fly no matter how good the wind (EQ) or how well the frame is built (RQ). Rinku's clarity of goal was his string tension in that final over — everything else (skill, fitness, team support) was already in place; the goal is what let it all convert into six sixes' worth of output when it mattered most.
Bringing This Into the Workplace: How to "Write It On Your Hand"
You are not walking out to bat against a fast bowler in a T20 chase. But you face your own version of the final over — a client pitch, a performance review, a product launch, a difficult negotiation. Here is how I coach teams to apply Rinku's method in ordinary corporate life:
1. Name the specific outcome, not the vague ambition
Not "I want this project to go well" but "I want the client to sign the renewal by Friday 5 PM." Specificity is what makes a goal rehearsable. You cannot visualise "going well." You can visualise a signature on a page.
2. Put it somewhere you will physically see it
Rinku wrote it on his hand. In a corporate context, this could be a sticky note on your laptop, a one-line note pinned at the top of your task app, or literally written on your palm before you walk into the boardroom. The medium matters less than the repetition of seeing your own specific goal before the moment arrives.
3. Rehearse the outcome, not just the effort
Most professionals prepare by rehearsing effort — "I'll go through my slides one more time." Rinku rehearsed the outcome itself — the feeling of being Man of the Match. Before your next big meeting, spend two minutes actually picturing the outcome you want, in detail, the way you'd replay a memory. This is the same visualisation technique elite athletes and, per Carol Dweck's research on mindset, high performers across fields use to convert ambition into calm execution under pressure.
4. Set the deadline that makes it real
Rinku's deadline wasn't "someday" — it was that specific match, that specific over. Your goals need the same teeth. A goal without a date is still a dream wearing a goal's clothing.
| Dream (vague) | Goal (Rinku's way) |
|---|---|
| "I want to do well in this match" | "Man of the Match — written on my hand, visualised before every ball" |
| "I want to grow in my career" | "Promoted to Team Lead by the March appraisal cycle, with two specific deliverables done by December" |
| "I want this client to be happy" | "Signed renewal by Friday 5 PM, with the pricing objection pre-answered in the first ten minutes" |
From Aligarh to the Winning Over
What makes Rinku Singh's story land so hard in a training room is the contrast between where he started and where that over ended. A boy from a financially struggling family in Aligarh does not get many "final overs" handed to him — he has to be ready the one time it happens. That readiness wasn't chance. It was a subconscious mind that had already rehearsed victory so many times that when the real moment came, his body knew exactly what to do while his mind stayed calm enough to do it.
That is the whole promise of Technique #1 in the PQ section of Stars at India Inc.: set the goal with enough clarity, specificity and deadline, and you convert pressure into performance instead of panic. Rinku didn't hit five sixes because he was fearless. He hit five sixes because in his own mind, he had already hit them long before the bowler ran in.
If you want the next chapter in this arc — how Rahul Dravid broke a career-defining ambition into small, sequential milestones over years rather than one over — read Rahul Dravid: The Wall's lesson in breaking goals into manageable steps. And if you want the full Technique #1 playbook this story sits inside, start with Technique #1: Goal Setting.
I bring stories like Rinku Singh's into corporate training sessions across India precisely because they are not abstractions — they are proof, from our own dressing rooms and boardrooms, that clarity of goal changes outcomes under real pressure. If you're building a leadership or productivity program for your team, this is exactly the kind of technique we install, not just narrate.
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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 Rinku Singh actually do before hitting five consecutive sixes?
Before the crucial match, Rinku Singh wrote his aspiration on his hand — visualising himself as the Man of the Match. He mentally rehearsed the outcome repeatedly, training his subconscious mind to expect success rather than fear failure, so that when the final over arrived his body simply executed what his mind had already "lived" many times.
Which team and bowler was Rinku Singh facing when he hit the five sixes?
Rinku Singh was batting for Kolkata Knight Riders against Gujarat Titans in the 2023 IPL season. With the match hanging in the balance in the final over, he hit five consecutive sixes to turn the game around for his team.
How does the Rinku Singh story connect to the Winning Kite framework?
Goal Setting is Technique #1 on the Productivity (PQ) side — the bottom of your Winning Kite. Rinku's clarity of target and visualisation is a textbook PQ skill: without it, even strong EQ and RQ cannot give your kite the thrust to fly. See the full framework at /kite-leadership-framework.
What is the difference between a dream and a goal, using the Rinku Singh example?
A dream is "I want to win this match" — vague, with no deadline or specific picture. A goal is what Rinku wrote on his hand: a specific, visualised outcome (Man of the Match) tied to a specific moment (that over, that match). A goal is a dream with a deadline and a picture attached to it.
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