The Three Games: Why Entrepreneurs (and Cricketers) Fail Even When They're Talented

Every young cricketer thinks they're playing one game: Cricket.

Every entrepreneur thinks they're playing one game: Business.

Both are wrong.

Success in any performance field—whether sports or business—depends on winning three simultaneous games, most of which are invisible.

Most people lose the games they never realized they were playing.

Game 1: The Performance Game (What Everyone Sees)

In cricket, this is straightforward:

Batting technique.

Bowling skills.

Fitness. Fielding.

Match performance.

In business:

Product quality.

Marketing.

Operations.

Execution.

Customer experience.

This is the visible game. What fans, customers, and spectators judge. Where most people spend 90% of their energy.

But here's the truth: Most careers don't collapse because of a lack of skill. Most careers collapse because of the other two games.

Game 2: The Survival & Opportunity Game (What Actually Determines Your Future)

This game is invisible but decisive.

In cricket, success depends on your life infrastructure, not just your game:

• Can your family support 5–10 years of "no income"?

• Can you afford professional coaching, diet, fitness, and travel for trials?

• Do you have contacts to get visibility with selectors and academies?

• Are you in the right geography? Mumbai opens doors that remote districts never will.

• How many failures can you absorb before life forces you to quit?

This isn't about privilege or pity. It's about the runway.

A talented player from a struggling family has maybe 2–3 years to break through before financial reality forces a different path. A player with family wealth can fail for a decade and keep playing. Same talent. Completely different games.

The player without resources must be strategic about everything: which trials to attend, when to relocate, whether to take coaching jobs to stay in the ecosystem, and when to accept that the window is closing.

The player with resources can experiment, recover from setbacks, and wait for the right opportunity.

Neither approach is better. But playing a resource-heavy strategy when you have a limited runway will end you.

Startups work identically.

Most don't fail because the idea wasn't good or the product wasn't great. They fail because founders:

• Ran out of personal savings before reaching profitability

• Hit family pressure to get a "real job"

• Couldn't sustain the mental toll of uncertainty

• Lacked the network to open critical doors—investors, early customers, advisors

• Couldn't afford to iterate long enough to find product-market fit

A bootstrapped founder must reach revenue in months. A VC-backed founder can burn cash for years building toward a bigger outcome. Same business fundamentals. Completely different survival games.

The bootstrapped founder saying "we'll figure out monetization later" is playing someone else's game. The VC-backed founder obsessing over immediate profitability might be missing the billion-dollar opportunity.

Talent is irrelevant if you can't survive long enough to use it.

Game 3: The Professionalism Game (The One Nobody Talks About)

But even if you have talent (Game 1) and resources (Game 2), there's a third silent killer: your own behavior.

This is the game of discipline, consistency, humility, emotional maturity, coachability, work ethic, reliability—and how you handle both success and failure.

Every coach has seen this player: exceptionally talented, opportunities handed to them, family support in place, and visibility with selectors—everything aligned for success.

But they showed up late to practice. Argued with coaches. Let early success inflate their ego. Developed a reputation for being difficult. Burned bridges with teammates who would later become selectors. Made poor lifestyle choices that eroded their fitness.

They were brilliant at Game 1. Advantage in Game 2. But they destroyed themselves in Game 3.

Here's what they didn't understand: Cricket is a relationship-dependent game. Selectors don't just pick the best batsman—they pick reliable, coachable, team-oriented players they trust. When two players have similar talent, the one with a professional reputation gets the call—every time.

This isn't about being fake or political. It's about recognizing that your behavior either compounds your opportunities or destroys them.

Talent opens doors. Character keeps them open.

Business is identical.

Brilliant founders with strong ideas fail because of:

Impulsive decisions that alienate investors

Co-founder fights that tears companies apart

Lack of discipline in execution

Arrogance after early wins that blinds them to market feedback

Poor communication that drives away top talent

Emotional burnout from the inability to manage stress

Treating employees poorly, then wondering why they can't retain anyone

Investors say it explicitly: "We don't fund ideas. We fund founders who won't self-destruct."

A CEO with a great product but a reputation for burning through teams will struggle to raise capital. A founder who ignores board advice will find their next round much harder. A leader who can't control their temper will watch their best people leave.

Game 3 failures are particularly painful because they're entirely self-inflicted. The external barriers—talent, resources, opportunities—were already cleared. The only obstacle left was the person themselves.

Your "Starting Point" or can say 'Life Balance Sheet' Decides Your Strategy.

Here's a crucial insight most people miss: You cannot play the same strategy as someone with a different starting point.

In cricket:

A player from a wealthy, connected family can take risks, fail multiple times, and experiment with different formats and roles. They have a margin for error.

A middle-class player must be methodical—timing trials carefully, choosing cities strategically, balancing cricket with part-time work to extend runway.

A player from a poor family is in survival mode from day one. Every trial might be the last chance. Every opportunity must be maximized. There's no room for experimentation.

The biggest mistake?

Trying to play a privileged strategy without privileged resources.

In cricket terms: Playing like Virender Sehwag—aggressive, boundary-seeking, high-risk—when your life situation demands Rahul Dravid: patient, strategic, accumulating value methodically.

You can't play T20-level aggression when your life requires Test-match patience.

If you're in a precarious position—limited resources, narrow margin for error, one mistake could end you—you cannot afford a high-risk approach. You need patience and precision.

The trap is playing an aggressive game when your life circumstances demand a defensive one."

In business:

A VC-funded startup can burn cash to capture market share, experiment with business models, and hire aggressively before revenue justifies it.

A bootstrapped founder must reach revenue quickly, validate every expense, and grow within cash flow constraints.

A solopreneur can't afford long experimentation cycles at all—every month of runway matters.

The trap: A bootstrapped founder reading about "blitzscaling" and trying to grow like a venture-backed competitor. They're playing someone else's game with someone else's resources. By the time they realize, they're out of cash.

Example in business terms:

• Dravid-type businesses: Amazon under Bezos—willing to grind, take losses strategically, build long-term, even when pressure mounted

• Dhoni-type businesses: Apple—calculated risk-taking, knowing exactly when to launch products, when to wait

• Sehwag-type businesses: Many startups with "blitzscaling" mentality—grow fast or die trying. Works spectacularly when it works (Facebook, Uber in early days), but leaves little room for recovery

Your core insight stands: Players with high situational adaptability need superior game awareness because they're constantly recalibrating. Sehwag's single-gear brilliance required less understanding of the situation but demanded absolute awareness of himself and his execution.

In struggling businesses (or defensive cricket situations), you cannot afford a Sehwag approach. You need Dravid's patience, Dhoni's calculation, or Kohli's adaptability.

Know which game you're actually playing. Not the one you wish you were playing.

Meta-Awareness: The Skill That Separates Those Who Make It from Those Who Don't

The best athletes and founders constantly ask themselves:

• "Where am I truly stuck?"

• "What is my real bottleneck?"

• "What is the game I'm actually losing?"

• "Am I plateauing?"

• "Is my geography, network, or environment holding me back?"

• "Should I switch formats, cities, or strategies?"

• "Do I need a different coach, mentor, or team?"

• "Am I exceptional at this, or just good?"

This is pattern recognition applied to your own life.

A cricket example:

"My batting has improved steadily for two years, but opportunities haven't increased. My real bottleneck isn't skill—it's visibility. Selectors in my state don't know I exist. I need to move to a different city or find a coach with selection committee connections."

A business example:

"Our product is genuinely solid and users love it, but sales remain flat. The bottleneck isn't features—it's distribution. We need to stop building and start figuring out how to reach customers."

A professionalism example:

"Our team keeps churning. Exit interviews are vague but consistent. Maybe the bottleneck isn't compensation or workload—it's my leadership style. I need feedback I'm not getting."

This meta-awareness—the ability to diagnose which game you're losing—is more valuable than raw talent.

Because once you see the real bottleneck, you can address it. Without that awareness, you keep grinding at the wrong problem while the real one kills you slowly.

Why This Matters for Businesses, CEOs, and Investors

If you're hiring, investing, building teams, or mentoring, understanding the Three Games framework changes how you evaluate people.

You stop asking: "Is this person talented?"

You start asking:

Do they have a runway? Can they survive long enough to succeed, or will life circumstances force them out prematurely?

Do they understand their real position? Are they playing the right strategy for their resources, or copying someone else's playbook?

Are they self-aware? Can they recognize when they're plateauing, when to pivot, and when to ask for help?

Can they handle pressure? Do they compound success or self-destruct when things get hard?

Are they professionally reliable? Will they build bridges or burn them?

These questions are far more predictive of long-term success than skill assessments alone.

The most talented candidate might be the riskiest hire if they're playing the wrong game or lack Game 3 discipline. The less flashy candidate who demonstrates meta-awareness and professionalism might be your most valuable team member.

When evaluating founders for investment, ask:

• How much runway do they actually have? (Game 2)

• Do they understand their constraints and play accordingly? (Meta-awareness)

• What's their reputation with former colleagues and advisors? (Game 3)

• How do they handle setbacks? (Game 3)

The founder with a brilliant pitch but a history of co-founder conflicts is a red flag, regardless of how innovative their product is.

The founder who clearly articulates their bottlenecks and has adapted their strategy accordingly—even if the business isn't scaling yet—might be your best bet.

The Uncomfortable Truth

Most talented people fail not because they weren't good enough.

They fail because they were playing the wrong game entirely.

They mastered performance while ignoring survival and professionalism.

By the time they realized what was actually killing them, it was too late.

The games don't get easier when you see them clearly. But at least you're finally playing the right ones.

Which game are you losing right now?

Not the one you're focused on—the one you're ignoring.

That's where your future is actually being decided.

Talent opens the door.

 Your strategy, discipline, and survival ability determine whether you walk through it.

"Which game have you been ignoring? Share in the comments—your insight might help someone else recognize their blind spot."