Now I will wholeheartedly confess to being no cricket expert, but what I have come to recognise is how intrinsically linked the skills and strengths to be successful in sport and music are, and it fascinates me how being the best on the pitch (no pun intended here) can be aligned with a musician performing their best on stage. And this article takes it a step further, in linking how musical training can lead to future success in other disciplines. I hadn't heard of Alastair Cook until I read this article (somewhat displaying my cricket ignorance here), which I was fortunate enough to spot in my twitter feed (retweeted by the Royal Academy of Music), and it caught my eye. 

In short, Alistair Cook sums up how his classical musical training and playing in an orchestra has helped him to focus his mind, and how to truly concentrate on something, to achieve an end goal whilst working as an integral member of a team. And crucially, apply this to a completely different discipline. 

Playing as a member of an orchestra involves working in a team of perhaps 80 people (your fellow orchestral players), led by a conductor whose job it is to ensure that everyone works together, at precisely the same time, in a different language ( through musical notation), in order to achieve the  end goal of a world class, top quality musical performance. The conductor may not know how your instrument works or be an expert in what you have to do in your particular role - but you're expected to and must obey their guidance and interpretations, which may involve you responding to as well as looking out for and predicting what may be different to what you rehearsed (in a business context, read: what you might have discussed earlier and planned). And within that framework and those boundaries, you must also find the opportunity to show your own creativity and style. All of this under pressure, with zero room for error, and with an audience of tens, hundreds or thousands watching and listening, what's key is that you make them feel that this performance is the most important thing in the world, and their enjoyment and experience is your top priority. All of sudden when you map this onto a sports match, or a client meeting even, the transferable skills become evident.