Sanjay Manjrekar Losing the Will to Practice

    Sanjay Manjrekar had the talent to play for India for a decade longer than he did. What he lost wasn't skill — it was the will to practice. Here's what that teaches every professional about Achievement Drive.

    Sanjay Manjrekar Losing the Will to Practice

    Sanjay Manjrekar Losing the Will to Practice

    Sanjay Manjrekar had the technique, the temperament and the Test average to play for India for another decade. What he didn't have, past a certain point, was the will to keep practicing. That one missing ingredient — not skill, not opportunity, but hunger — is the difference between a career that peaks early and one that keeps climbing.

    In short

    Where this sits on your Winning Kite

    Achievement Drive is Trait #12, and it sits on the EQ — left — side of your Winning Kite (KITE Leadership Framework), under the Self-Motivation cluster. Without it, even the strongest technical skill on the Productivity side of your kite eventually stalls, because nobody is pushing it forward. EQ, RQ and PQ have to work together for the kite to rise — and Achievement Drive is the wind that keeps the EQ side taut.

    A batsman built to last twenty years

    Sanjay Manjrekar was never a flashy cricketer. He was the classical, technically correct top-order batsman India relied on through the late 1980s and early 1990s — the kind of player commentators use as the textbook example of a "coaching manual" cover drive. He had the temperament for Test cricket, the patience to occupy the crease for hours, and enough class to be considered among the finer batting talents of his generation.

    By every measure of ability, Manjrekar had the tools to play for India well into his thirties, the way many of his technically similar contemporaries did. Cricket, more than almost any other sport, rewards those who keep refining a small technical toolkit for years — the difference between a good batsman and a great one is often measured in the thousands of extra hours spent in the nets, correcting a foot movement by an inch, facing throw-downs long after the rest of the team has left the ground.

    That is where the story turns.

    The hunger that quietly switched off

    After playing cricket at the highest level for a few years, something shifted in Manjrekar. His desire to practice — to keep doing the unglamorous, repetitive grind that had built his game in the first place — began to diminish. His interests moved elsewhere, toward music and singing, pursuits he was genuinely drawn to. And at a certain level, without any single dramatic event marking the moment, he lost the will to practice.

    This is worth sitting with, because it isn't a story about failure of talent. It's a story about failure of drive. Manjrekar didn't forget how to bat. He didn't get technically worse overnight. What happened is quieter and, in many ways, more dangerous: the internal fire that pushes a professional to keep showing up for the hard, boring, repetitive work — even after they've already proven themselves — dimmed.

    And once that fire dims, professionals get stuck. They can't move forward. The drive disappears. That's usually where failure creeps in — not as a single dramatic collapse, but as a slow drift while rivals who are still hungry keep closing the gap and then overtaking.

    Once you're out of the team — or out of the promotion cycle, or out of the deal — and you've reached that saturation point, making a comeback becomes nearly impossible. Why? Because a comeback requires hard work again. It requires starting, in some sense, from scratch. And that is a far harder ask for someone who has already tasted success than it is for someone still hungry for their first taste of it.

    What is Achievement Drive?

    Achievement Drive is the relentless hunger to chase excellence, to set challenging goals, and to constantly improve yourself — even when you've already achieved success. It is not about competition with others. It is about pushing yourself to the next level, again and again, regardless of where "level" currently sits.

    In Hindi, I often describe it as "भूख" (bhookh) — hunger. Not physical hunger. An emotional hunger. A hunger for mastery. A hunger for excellence that doesn't switch off just because you've hit a milestone.

    Achievement Drive is like a shappat — an oath — you take with yourself: "Nahi, mujhe aur behtar karna hai. Mujhe aur next level par jana hai." (No, I need to do better. I need to go to the next level.) It's that bhookh, that hunger for more, to become unstoppable.

    Why professionals lose it — the saturation trap

    Most of us start our careers with big dreams. We chase that first job, that first house, that first car, that first big promotion. Then we get there. And for many professionals, arriving becomes the beginning of the end.

    You know that old dialogue — "Jo haath lag gaya, wo kya lage?" (What use is what you already have?) People start saying, "Yaar, bahut ho gaya. Ab aish karne ka time hai. Bas, ab ho gaya." (Enough has been achieved. Time to enjoy. That's it.)

    For Manjrekar, by all accounts, the saturation point arrived alongside a genuine pull toward music. There's nothing wrong with discovering a new passion — but when that discovery quietly replaces the discipline that built your existing career, without a conscious decision to trade one for the other, you don't get a graceful transition. You get stagnation, followed by decline, followed by an exit that arrives sooner than your talent should have allowed.

    The same pattern plays out constantly in business. Entrepreneurs start with fire in their belly, hungry until they reach a certain point. Then they saturate. Then insecurity creeps in: "Jitna hai, use hi bacha lo. Mujhe ab isse zyada nahi karna hai." (Let me just protect what I have. I don't want to do more than this.) That is exactly when the decline begins — for a cricketer, a founder, or a mid-career manager three years into the same role, coasting on a reputation built five years ago.

    The contrast: professionals who never let the drive die

    Cricket gives us the opposite example too, and it's worth placing next to Manjrekar's story.

    Saurav Ganguly once shared a story about his trainer — himself a former cricketer — watching Virat Kohli walk into the gym one evening after batting for six to seven hours and scoring 167 runs in Vizag. The trainer was stunned. "Virat, you just batted for six to seven hours. And now you're going to the gym?"

    Kohli's answer: "I want to convert scores like 167 into double hundreds and triple hundreds. And that can only happen if I work on my fitness — if I can train even when I'm exhausted, if I can take my body to the next level." He had noticed, back in 2012, that the game itself had changed — that Australian sides were dominating through relentless fitness — and that if he stuck to old methods, he wouldn't survive at the top. Kohli didn't operate from saturation. He operated from Achievement Drive, and that difference in mindset is a large part of why he became one of the most dominant batsmen of his generation instead of a talented player who peaked early.

    Ashish Nehra tells the same story from a different angle: persistence through setback rather than dominance through success. Nehra played international cricket for over 18 years, battling injuries and competition that would have ended most careers. In the 2003 World Cup, he took six wickets against England to help India reach the final. In 2011, after fighting his way back from injury into a team that hadn't guaranteed him a spot, he bowled a crucial over in the dying moments of the final against Sri Lanka — helping India win the World Cup after a 28-year wait. Nehra's Achievement Drive helped him overcome obstacles and push through when giving up would have been the easier, more forgivable choice.

    Manjrekar, Kohli and Nehra all had comparable natural talent for the level they were playing at. What separated their trajectories wasn't ability. It was whether the hunger stayed lit after the early wins arrived.

    The same pattern in the workplace

    Take Raj, who works in an IT company. Five years ago, he learned C++ and Java, became comfortable, and whenever his manager suggests Python or AI-related skills, his answer is, "I'm already doing well with what I know. Why should I change?" Result: Raj's career stagnates while younger colleagues who kept learning overtake him in promotions and salary hikes. He now complains that the company doesn't value experience anymore.

    Priya, in the same company, started with the same C++ and Java foundation. When Python and AI became important, she didn't resist — she took online courses, practiced after work, and became proficient within a year. She's now leading a team on cutting-edge AI projects. The difference between Raj and Priya is not talent. It's Achievement Drive — the same quality Manjrekar had in abundance early in his career and quietly lost later.

    Achievement Drive in Indian business leaders

    When I met BB Thombare, Chairman of Natural Sugar, Natural Milk & Milk Products and Ellora Seeds, in 2019, he told me: "Natural Milk is already one of Maharashtra's top milk suppliers. But our mission is to make it the number one in Maharashtra and India by 2030 — and expand it to as many districts as possible across the country." Twenty-two years into building his business empire, still chasing bigger goals. Still hungry. His company's own core value captures it: "Doing better than yesterday."

    Mr. Karaiadiselvan, Managing Director of CADD Centre Training Services, started as a trainee in 1992 and now heads the largest engineering-design-software training institution in Asia. Even managing 500-plus entrepreneurs a year, his drive hasn't slowed — he's a voracious reader who constantly seeks feedback, and his line stays with me: "Feedback is the breakfast of champions." When I hear "Achievement Drive," he's the first person who comes to mind.

    And a friend of mine, Nitin, founder of a training company in Pune — nine years into a successful business, he still approaches digital marketing, sales and new software with the same aggression he had on day one. That's Achievement Drive refusing to saturate.

    How to diagnose Achievement Drive — in yourself or your team

    Five markers to watch for:

    Rebuilding Achievement Drive: how to develop it

    1. Find your flow

    Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's flow concept plots challenge against skill. Too much challenge for your current skill produces anxiety. Too little produces boredom. Flow — that state where concentration is total, creativity is high and effort feels effortless — happens when challenge and skill are balanced, and it needs to be recalibrated upward continually. Spend your days in the lower-left corner — what I call the Area of Apathy, scrolling social media, playing it safe, no real challenge and no real skill in play — and you will feel bored and restless no matter how comfortable your circumstances are. Move from Apathy toward Ecstasy by deliberately raising the difficulty as your skill grows.

    2. Set your own challenging goals

    Don't wait for a manager to hand you a target. If you're in sales and hitting your monthly number easily, push yourself to beat it by 20%. If you're a developer, commit to learning a new language every quarter. If you manage people, aim to develop three high performers this year.

    3. Seek feedback constantly

    Stars are obsessed with knowing how they're actually doing — customer satisfaction scores, completion rates, skills acquired, problems solved. Ask your manager, your colleagues, even your customers, and use what they tell you.

    4. Surround yourself with achievement-driven people

    The people around you shape your ceiling. Comfort-zone colleagues will keep you comfortable. Mentors and peers with real hunger will keep pulling you forward.

    5. Treat uncertainty as opportunity, not threat

    New software, new processes, restructured teams — these trigger our need for certainty, one of the six core emotional needs. Achievement Drive requires overriding that instinct and choosing to see the disruption as a chance to grow rather than a threat to withstand.

    This mirrors what Carol Dweck describes as a growth mindset — treating setbacks and new challenges as opportunities to develop rather than as verdicts on your ability. It's supporting colour to Avinash's framework, not a substitute for it: Achievement Drive is the applied, workplace-tested version built from the leaders and cricketers in this chapter.

    The final question

    What is your saturation point? Your first job? Your first house? A certain salary or title? Or have you taken the oath to never stop pursuing excellence?

    Manjrekar's story isn't a tragedy — he built a respected second career in commentary and clearly followed a genuine passion into music. But as a lesson in Achievement Drive, it's precise: talent bought him a seat at the highest level of the game, and for a period, hunger kept him there. When the hunger quietly left, so did the career, years before his ability alone should have allowed.

    Are you comfortable where you are — or are you hungry for more? Because Achievement Drive is what separates those who rise to the top from those who stay stuck. The choice, every single day, is yours.

    Explore how this trait connects to the other 24 traits across the EQ, RQ and PQ sides of the kite at The Winning Kite (KITE Leadership Framework), or bring this chapter into your organisation through Avinash's Signature Programs and full list of corporate training topics. Questions before you book? Get in touch.

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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 does 'losing the will to practice' mean in a career context?

    It means you still have the skill and reputation from past success, but you've quietly stopped doing the hard, repetitive work that built that success in the first place. The talent doesn't vanish overnight — the hunger to keep sharpening it does, and that's what shows up first as a plateau, then as decline.

    Why did Sanjay Manjrekar's cricket career end earlier than his talent suggested?

    Manjrekar was a technically gifted top-order batsman for India. But after playing at the highest level for a few years, his desire to grind through practice diminished as his interests shifted toward music and singing. Once the will to practice went, his batting stopped evolving, and rivals who kept working overtook him.

    What is Achievement Drive in the Winning Kite framework?

    Achievement Drive is Trait #12 on the EQ (left) side of the Winning Kite. It's the relentless hunger to chase excellence, set challenging goals and keep improving — even after you've already succeeded. It sits under Self-Motivation, one of the five EQ clusters.

    How can I rebuild Achievement Drive once I feel I've plateaued?

    Find your flow by matching challenge to skill and raising both gradually, set your own challenging goals instead of waiting for your manager to set them, seek feedback constantly, surround yourself with achievement-driven people, and treat uncertainty as opportunity rather than threat.

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