How Australians made nonsense of ‘chokers’ tag
If “It was The Sun wot won it” – as its front page claimed after the 1992 general election – was it The Telegraph wot lost England the one-day international series on Wednesday night?
That could be the conclusion drawn by a superstitious person. Which most sports fans are, when it comes down to it. Were we tempting fate with our report on Australia’s choking habit? The one which appeared on Wednesday morning, suggesting that
“When things get close between Australia and England, it is Australia who have recently failed to deliver”?
Perhaps it was a little cheeky. You have to admit, though, that the article would have looked brilliantly prophetic had Jofra Archer not overstepped the line in his sixth over.
Who could have guessed that Archer would bowl the first no-ball of his one-day international career at the most pivotal moment, just as Alex Carey offered a simple catch that would have reduced
Australia to 87 for six in pursuit of 303? The chances must be lower than a snake’s belly, as they say Down Under.
But then, strange things happen in sport. As Carey and Glenn Maxwell piled on an improbable 212-run stand, we at Telegraph Towers might have reflected that some sort of cosmic vengeance was being visited upon us, for even questioning the bottle of this high-pedigree team.
As Wednesday’s drama unfolded, it was England – not Australia – whose brains entered the smoothie machine. Eoin Morgan maintained his usual poker face as he gambled on Adil Rashid for the last over. But the next ball was promptly smoked over the sightscreen. “Rashid has put that on a plate,” fumed Michael Vaughan on commentary. Who were the chokers now?
Did the Australians gaffer-tape a copy of The Telegraph report to the dressing-room wall for motivation, as several commenters on the original article suggested they might? Perhaps we are overestimating our own importance here.
If they did, though, they would have been better off printing off the online version of the article. The one that bore the headline “How Australia developed a choking problem against England”. As opposed to the much more demure newspaper version: “Why Australia struggle in the pressure zone”.
Emotive word, choke. How strange that we reserve our worst scorn not for the outclassed opponent, but for the one who came close to winning.
Sometimes, the very fear of choking is enough to make you choke. See Dominic Thiem, the tennis champion who inched his way to an agonising victory in last Sunday’s US Open final. In his previous major finals – against Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic – Thiem had whirled his racket like D’artagnan swinging a cutlass. But when expected to crush a lesser opponent, he poked and prodded like a trainee hairdresser.
Why do we do this to ourselves? It is just the way humans are wired. In a recent experiment, researchers at Johns Hopkins University asked volunteers to play computer games for money. Every time they increased the prize, they saw a corresponding rise in the number of fumbles and screw-ups.
This is why the “nothing-to-lose” mentality is so dangerous. Thiem was all but out of the match – at two sets and a break down – when he suddenly found his game. Maxwell’s explanation of his own mindset when he joined Carey in the middle was that, “Things couldn’t get much worse”.
Those who suffer no self-doubt are freakishly rare – though they do exist. Ian Botham, Shane Warne and Michael Jordan could not conceive of failure, so choking was a mystery to them. For the rest of us, it is part of life – as well as arguably the most relatable thing about watching sport. Almost every athlete has to make peace with this essential truth at some stage. And as we discovered on Wednesday night, what goes around, comes around.