The true effect of sledging on performance is nothing to shout about
Tick.”
“Tock.”
“Tick.”
“Tock.”
When it comes to the art of sledging, few stories beat the one where Michael Slater, the fiery Australia opener, was welcomed to the crease during a Sheffield Shield match by Shane Warne and Darren Berry, intimating he was a timebomb.
“Tick.”
“Tock.”
The tag-team verbals between Warne and Berry continued until Slater succumbed to the pressure by holing out at midwicket a few overs later. At which point they yelled out “Kaboom!” in unison.
At Edgbaston on Thursday the sledging is bound to have a spikier edge. How could it not, given the ingredients in place? A first Ashes Test of the summer. Two sides laden with serial trash talkers. And the sandpapergate three – Steve Smith, David Warner and Cameron Bancroft – in Australia’s squad. The touchpaper, one imagines, will not be hard to find.
We can quibble about whether sledging represents the spirit of cricket or where the line of acceptability should be – in any case it would surely give the Maginot Line a run for its money in terms of sheer ineffectiveness – but we rarely ask whether sledging in sport works.
Academics at the University of Birmingham have just put their minds to it in a new paper, “Effects of antisocial behaviour on opponent’s anger, attention, and performance”, published in the Journal of Sports Science. Their study involved taking 60 novice basketball players and pairing each of them with a rival. The two players were then told that their goal was to beat the other person – with the winner being entered into a draw to win a £30 prize – by shooting more baskets in 10 free-throw attempts.
But there was a twist. Just as one of them was about to make some throws, the rival would say something designed either to make them angry (for instance, “I think you need to go to the gym”) – or to distract them (“Make sure your laces are done up”). Performance was assessed by the number of successful baskets and a pointsbased scoring system, while anger and attention were measured afterwards. A control group was also in effect. The results showed that, although participants noted feeling more angry and distracted when sledged, it did not affect the overall shooting performance. The reason, the academics speculate, is that, while some players are affected by sledging, many feed off it.
That backs up a 2008 study that showed that trash talking also had no effect on performance on participants on a computer-based American football game. Other research has found that 83% of college athletes say getting trash-talked inspires them to improve
their performance.
The only study I have found on how elite cricketers perceive sledging, conducted on 10 young players on the fringes of the first-class game by researchers at Loughborough University in 2011, found that most said it had substantial effect on their batting. However, some insisted it was not a negative at all: they needed the verbal abuse to become engaged in a match.
These studies have limitations. Being abused in an academic trial is hardly the same as having 70,000 Australians questioning your manhood at the MCG. The Birmingham researchers also admit their code of ethics meant their insults were not allowed to be “offensive enough to provoke violent reactions – whereas during an actual competitive match there are fewer and less limiting constraints”.
Even so, it is worth asking how much sledging should be permissible in this day and age. For decades it has largely been regarded as a legitimate act, which tests a player’s mental fortitude every bit as much as a well-placed bouncer. Jimmy Anderson called it a skill that he regards as “one of the weapons at his disposal” while Steve Waugh coined the phrase mental disintegration, which also anticipated any objectors because, if you complained, then it indicated you were frit.
Perhaps attitudes are changing. An Australian study last year found that 21% of people who played and watched sport agreed that sledging was a natural part of sport, compared with 55% who disagreed. In that same study 61% of people agreed that race, gender, religion, sexuality, occupation, physical appearance and on-field performance were not acceptable topics for sledging.
The solution offered by the author of the study, published in the Journal of Sport, Ethics and Philosophy, was that players who sledge should “aim to be funny, creative, spontaneous and playful, rather than hurtful, serious, insulting, degrading and offensive” in order not to corrupt the spirit of sport.
It is a noble intention but I prefer the approach employed by Viv Richards when he was sledged by the Glamorgan fast bowler Greg Thomas. After Richards had played and missed several times Thomas piped up that the ball was “red, round and weighs about five ounces, in case you were wondering”.
The next ball was smashed out of the ground and into the River Taff. Thomas was sent packing too. “Hey, Greg man,” said Richards, as he followed the bowler back to his mark, “since you know the colour, shape and size, go help them find it.”