Stumped by Cyber Risk? Ask a Cricket Captain: Michael Vaughan x Sumedh Thakar | ROCon EMEA

Now, it's our pleasure to invite on stage our president and CEO, just over 10 seconds while they say hello, and legendary cricketer Michael Vaughan. Thank you, guys.

Afternoon. I have to say I get asked to do one or two things in life. I must answer about the OBE. You're right. I've no idea how I got it and what I got it for, hitting a few balls and changing a few fielders, but I get offered one or two things. And I have to say when I got offered the chance to be an ambassador of a cricket team in America, it took me about one second to say yes. So it's great to be here. I'm sure you've had a terrific day. I'm sure you'll have a terrific night as well, but it's a real pleasure to be here today.

I've got absolutely no clue what you're on about. Don't get hacked. I'll read about it. I know it's an issue. I'm just, where's your fancy phone gone? Yeah, I know. He's got a very fancy phone that's a triple screen. So, what I've already kind of learned today is that I need to go from my single screen to, well, I've seen double screens, and now the boss here has got a triple screen. So I'm sure cybersecurity is wonderful. I don't know a great deal about it, but I want one of your triple screens.

Yeah, I mean, you've got to remember I was playing cricket about 16 years ago, which was a different game to what it is now. I guess in my time everything in life's about risk. And when you say which ball to face, hit, which ball not, that again is a decision that you have to make. And I always think that life's all about decision-making and making the right ones. You make more of the right ones, you're going to have more success. And I guess that's the same in your industry. The modern game in 2026, they don't leave any balls. They just try and whack it out the ground. So I don't know if you've got an equivalent in cyber that you just whack it out the ground at every opportunity, but that's the modern way. But it's just, I mean, noise. How do you deal with noise and you know, someone like Shane Warne, who's in my opinion the greatest player that's ever played cricket. Unfortunately, we lost him a few years ago, but you know, he would be 15 yards away. Not when he was bowling, but when he was in the slips trying to catch you out, just giving you plenty of that. So, trying to cope with the noise of a person with that amount of stature was just a mental process of just shutting him out and making sure that you don't listen to things that you don't want to hear. He said too much. But you know, I think always in any industry, in any sport, in any business, it's purely about decision-making. If you've got the right people making the right decisions, you generally get more decisions right than you get them wrong.

Yeah, I mean, in cricket particularly, I mean, I don't know how many of you are huge cricket fans, but we actually play a sport that can last five days. I mean, it's, try explaining that to the Americans. Yeah, and at the end of those five days, it can be a draw, believe it or not. So, you get periods in our game where, you know, this ball that comes at you will be moving. Yeah. You know, a bit like baseball, the ball moves in the air. And when the ball's moving around, obviously, it's more of a risk to get you out. So, then you have to be aware that while that ball is moving around, there's probably a more likely chance of you getting out if you're going to be swinging and trying to whack the ball out the ground. So, you have to play a different style of game when the ball moves. And then suddenly, on about day two, it might stop moving. And then you start to play a more risky game. You think that you've got more opportunity of scoring quicker runs. So, it's just a process of understanding. Again, I'll bore the life out of you if you want, but when the clouds come in, again, I don't know why, but the ball swings a bit more. You know, atmospheric pressure and some kind of pressure that comes down on the ball gets it moving. Again, it's beyond my pay grade that, but you've just got to assess when the risk is against you, you've got to be a little bit more careful. And when you get the opportunity in any business or sport, and you get the chance to get on the front foot and dominate, you have to take the opportunity.

No, I'm big on data. You know, I think you'd be silly in sport these days if you didn't take all the information. The key is gather all the information, then use it how you feel is best used for your team on the field. It's still a game of decision-making out in the middle because you said the conditions can change, but the amount of data that you require now and it's not just data on the personnel that you're going to be playing against. It's data on the pitch. You got to remember this ball has to bounce and it has to bounce on a surface. So you need to know every ounce of every bit of data about the surface from day one to day five. I'm going to keep boring you about that. It's a long process this game of cricket. So you need to have every ounce of data from not just the personnel and the human beings that you're playing against, but actually the conditions. So teams that are operating the best in the world, I would say India in white-ball cricket, Australia in red-ball cricket. They have with them, you know, people that are linked to the weather as well. So it's not just having information about the players that you're playing against. You need to know every aspect about the weather because as I said if the weather changes and the conditions change, the ball might do something different. The pitch is going to react in a different way. So you've got to gather all that information. You've then got to have good enough players to make the most of those condition changes. You've also got to have good enough players to read all the data and understand that. I mean some of the cricketers that we play, particularly me, they weren't that clever and they couldn't, you know, you'd give them a piece of paper to read and they'd get it wrong. So you've got to be careful in giving too much information to too many human beings, but data in all sports you look at football now and the moneyball system. Tony Bloom down at Brighton, he operates an incredible football club purely through data. You know, he has a system in place that all the football clubs are now buying off him because of all these players around the world and these scouting mechanisms. And that's happening in cricket now. I mean you look at India and you mentioned Saravanan, 15 years of age who's an incredible player. He's going to be the next Sachin Tendulkar. I have no doubt about that, but how many of those kind of players are around India? How many of those kind of players are here in the UK? So there's so many data kind of machines out there that would gather all the information about the player, what they're doing, how quick the bowling, how hard they're hitting it, how far they're hitting it. There's all this AI technology that all teams have now. So I think it's absolutely important.

The most important aspect in my game is still the heart. You've still got to have the human being that, you know, is going to give you absolutely everything and when the pressure moment's on, when it comes to that winning moment, you need calm heads. You need real disciplined players that will deliver the plan. You know, don't go away from the plan. You know, if you've thought about a plan, make sure, you know, in any sport you have to stick to it. You believe in it and it's having players that really trust the plan and are calm under pressure. I mean it's not easy when there's a huge amount of eyeballs in the stadium, huge amount of eyeballs on the television, but the best sporting teams seem to be able to slow things down. You know, so when the real hot pressure's on, you'll see a cricket team, you'll see all look very slow. You'll see a football team just slow everything down and it's just the best way of dealing with that real hot moment because what you really want to do is quicken everything up. You know, and that can affect your performance, affect your decision-making, but having all the data, having all the information, you know, it's very important, but you've still got to have characters. And you know, when you're picking teams and you're picking groups of players to play for you, you've got to make sure fundamentally you get the right characters in the dressing room. If you get the wrong characters and the right information, the right data, it's not going to work. If you get the right data and the right characters, that's the perfect combination.

Yeah, and then building a team, it's the same in business. If you're working in an office and you have, and I'm not saying any of you are in this room. I'm sure you're all fantastic, but if you've got bad eggs in your office, I'm sorry. You're all nodding. You've got some I can see. You know, characters need to, you know, whatever your business is, whatever your sports team, identification of roles, discipline within those roles of what you've been given. You know, the leader has to lead in a way that is leading that team forward with a vision. And if you have, I always say you want people to get on the bus with you. And if they're not willing to get on the bus and you know, you're giving them that vision of where the bus is going. If someone's trying to jump off and turn left when you're going right, that person will probably get someone else and there's nothing worse than I used to call it the whispering brigade in my dressing room. If I had the whispering brigade happening in a corner, I had to get rid of one or two of them. Because it just creates chaos. Am I getting people the sack in here? No. I don't want that, but I'm just saying if you're going to be a team, you really do have to work as one.

No, I mean you know, 18 years is a long time. So you know, I guess it was a free hit. You know, no one's expecting you to win when you've not done it for such a long period of time, but the key was players. The key is having the right players to be able to play the right style. I mean again, I don't know how many of you know about the 2005 Ashes, but Australia around that time were the best team in the world by distance. You could argue that five of their 11 would make the greatest teams of all time, but I always believe human being against a human being there's a chance. And if you get a group of human beings that are really willing to buy into togetherness, buy into a way of playing, be ultra positive at the right time. You need a bit of fortune when you do that, but you get it if you do everything right. And you take on another group of human beings with that same mentality, you've got a chance. And the data information that we had around 2005, that's from 2003 to 2005. We simplified it. Australia used to score at 3.69 runs per over. From 2003 to 2005, we made sure that we scored around that rate because we thought if we were going to play against that team, you know, we're not going to really bat against the likes of Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath that many more overs than they were going to get batting against ours. So we thought we'd have to score quickly. So someone like Kevin Pietersen made his debut, very flamboyant player, very aggressive. Freddie Flintoff came into form around that time, a very aggressive player. So we filled our team with the right styles of players that we felt could pressurize them. And I think it was probably the first time probably since '86-'87 that we started to look at ourselves rather than look at what they were doing. We thought well, if we can control what we're going to try to achieve which is a risky game played at the right way with the right personalities and we're willing to have a go and really buy in into having a go. It was risky, but it was worth the risk because if we didn't risk anything, we're probably going to get hammered once again. So personnel, buying into the risk that we all kind of agreed upon, certain little data information. We had to score at 3.7s and we had to bowl them out in around 86 overs. So again to me as a captain, we just got to bowl them out. So when they got to 70 overs and they were playing nicely, my message was very simple. Just bowl them out. You know, have all the catches in the right places and we'll take a few risks. So it wasn't that complicated.

No, I'd love to get up here and say oh, I made this speech, you know, and it really worked. No, it didn't. I had a bit of fortune, won a toss of the coin. We got toss of the coin right. We had no injuries. So in sport you're very looking at the fact that you've got a really good group of players. If I'd have lost Freddie Flintoff, we wouldn't have won. If I'd have lost Kevin Pietersen, we wouldn't have won. So everyone stayed fit and they lost one of their key players in Glenn McGrath. So we had a bit of fortune, but it was quite simple. I'd love to say it was a lot more complicated than that, but it was quite a simple process. We just played on the merits of your opponent and you know, they could have a bad day as well.

Yeah, it's, I mean, T20 cricket is great. It's brought a huge amount of fun into the game. It's brought a huge amount of wealth to the game. Yeah. And a lot of new eyeballs, but the ultimate test is the test match over five days. It tests you physically, mentally. You know, the discipline required to get up day in day out. You got to remember on day one you could have had a shocker. You know, you're out for naught. You've got another four days to try and get your mentality right. You know that you might bat on day two, it might not be till day three, it might not be till day four. So, mentally you've got to be ready to go. And physically it drains you. Yeah. It's a draining game, test match cricket. So, still to this day even the, you know, the Suryakumar Yadav of this world, if you sat down with him and said, 'What would you like to do?' I'd guarantee that he'd look you in the eye and say, 'I want to play test cricket for India.' Yeah. You know, I don't think we're at that stage. Yeah, it might come in time where players don't want to play test cricket and it's kind of moved on, but test cricket is still the pinnacle. It's still the one, you know, the World Test Championship final or the Ashes, England and Australia, it's still the one trophy that you really want to get in your hands. As much as it's great to play in the IPL and you know, the 100 here in the UK, the Big Bash in Australia or the Pakistan Super League, whatever the league that you play in, I still get a sense from the modern player that they're still desperate to play test match cricket.

Well, I did an interview with Lalit Modi who created the IPL and he said the 100's dead in three years. Lalit likes his opinions, but I would say in three years' time it'll probably be a T20 tournament. Okay. You know, there was reasons of why they had to create a new system here in the UK. It was to break away from the counties. It was to get terrestrial TV on side because it was a shorter window of three hours. BBC bought into that, which was great. But in three years' time, you know, the Silicon Valley crew who have bought Lords, they haven't paid 400 million for a reason. They realize that there's an opportunity here. So, get a lot of money. I'll be very interested what happens in a few years' time. I think it'll be a T20. It'll be, you know, the Indian Premier League, which is around now. And I think we'll have a window of four weeks in the summer around August that they'll try and make. I hope in time that India will allow their players to come. The real growth for cricket is to get India on board. Yeah. And if you can get in bed with the BCCI, run the game, and say to them, 'Can we have some of those Indian players to play here in the UK?' It'd just make the tournament that much better. So, yeah. I do like the 100. I like the teams. I like the movement of the game, but give me test match cricket over that.

Yeah, well, I think in any sport or business, you can't be, if you just sit still, you know, someone else will take over. Yeah. You know, you've always got to have a vision. You've always got to have a movement of where the game's going or where the business is needing to go. My dad actually gave me the best piece of advice when I got the England captaincy in 2003. You know, there was captaincy books and leadership books. And actually my dad gave me the best piece of advice. He sat me down one day and he was a sales person in Sheffield and he just said, 'Just manage the person, not the player.' Yeah. And I think that aligns itself with anything in life that you know, so often you know, particularly in my sport, you know, I'm managing a right-handed batter. You know, realistically, I'm not managing the right hand. I'm managing the person. Yeah. And if I can get the best out of the person, I can understand who that person is, there's more of a chance that that person will be able to play better in my team. So, I think that goes across all life. Get to know the person. Yeah. That dad advice was always the best.

Just ignore them. My board member was here earlier. He's not, so I could say I do the same. I mean, if you're winning, they're not going to be... Yeah, so if you're winning, no questions. There's a very controlling tool. Just win. If you win, they'll be fine. If you lose, you're knackered. You're going to get the tic tac. So, in cricket, I guess I had to go to board meetings and speak about the team, speak about the way that we've played, but fortunately around the time of 2003, 4, 5, we started to win many games of cricket and actually felt, I actually look at cricket sometimes, it's when you become the England cricket captain, you end up having too much power. You know, because you've got to remember you're going into a boardroom and most of the boards that sit on, you know, the board of the ECB for instance, the Wales cricket board, they're all cricket fans. So, they're kind of in awe of you. So, they're not your board. They're fans. Yeah. So, I think it's a little bit disjointed and you win games, you win an Ashes series and you become a little bit too powerful and that's not healthy at all, but yeah. I've sat on a few boards and I kind of always again, I always look at the people. Yeah. I just look at people all the time. I only ever invest in people. I know talking about cyber and tech and in a boardroom, if you've got good people, you've got a chance. If you've got average people, you've got no chance.

I think Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne as a combo. They were legends of the game. They were as good as any. Muttiah Muralitharan in Sri Lanka. Yeah. He was a pest. Yeah. He was incredible. I'll tell you a true story. So, Kevin Pietersen, so he made his debut in '05 and in 2006 we're playing Sri Lanka at Edgbaston Birmingham in a test match. And on the Tuesday night our coach Duncan Fletcher, big screen like this and he did a presentation on facing Muttiah Muralitharan, he's an off spinner from Sri Lanka with a dodgy action, right? And the coach is there talking us through this is Muttiah's off spinner. So he's got this video and he's stopping and starting like this is his off spinner and we're all looking. And he said and this is his other delivery it's the ball that goes the other way the doosra and we're looking and it looks exactly the same. All right, so after about five minutes the coach is explaining, Kevin Pietersen stuck his hand up. And he said yes Kev what have you got and Kevin just went coach he's only a spinner. So we all laughed because we said Kev you've never faced and I've never faced he's only a spinner. And it's Thursday morning arrives win the toss batting I go in at number three. I get 30 odd Muttiah Muralitharan gets me out. Yeah. I walk in the dressing room Kevin Pietersen's replacing me. Every in my time I've got my kit off as quickly to go and make sure I'm watching in the viewing area Kevin Pietersen face Muttiah Muralitharan for the first time. Yeah. So I'm sat there with all the players and all the management in this viewing area watching Kevin Pietersen and to a person in that room we were all thinking exactly the same thing get him out. You're rooting for your team member. Get him out. Yeah. Anyway third ball he dances down and he whacks him out of Birmingham. No it's 12th ball he reverse sweep hits him into the stand. He got a 100 he got 128. Oh my god. And he got out with 10 minutes to go before the play has ended. Yeah. And as he's walking off at Edgbaston in front of about 25,000 people he's waving his bat and as he's walking off I've had to turn to all my team and said we're going to have to clap. So we kind of clapped him I said we'll have to stand up so we stood up and clapped him off. And this is why I talk about having the right people and the right characters and he was a genius. Yeah. As he walked past us he just looked at us all and went told you. Now that's just having someone who could take on the best. Yeah. We had him in there in '05 to take on Warne and McGrath and he could do that. I've never seen a great sporting team get to being named as you know the winners of something major without having great players. Yeah. And I was fortunate to have two or three of them in my team. Yeah. Get the best players in the team talking about the best.

Thank you, thank you.