Choking, as an art-form
“If winning isn’t everything, why do they keep score?”
“If you can accept losing, you can’t win.”
- Vince Lombardi
I have never hidden the fact that cricket is a sport very close to my heart. For the benefit of readers none too keen on cricket, fret not; an understanding of the game isn’t critical towards getting this post.
The ICC Champions Trophy is underway — in short, it’s a mini-world cup held every two years — hosted by South Africa. The background is this: South Africa, ever since their return to the cricketing fold in 1991 following their time in exile due to apartheid, have been a force in international cricket. They have produced sides that just brushed teams aside, played disciplined cricket, had excellent team ethic, revolutionised athleticism and fielding and for a period of time, were arguably everyone’s second team. They were impossible to hate despite their dominance. Unlike the Aussies. However — and there has to be a however — they also earned a nickname, something that continues to haunt them till date: chokers.
Earlier this year, they were destroying every other team in the Twenty20 World Cup (that’s another major tournament in the shortest format of the game) but came a cropper against the Sri Lankans in the semis, going in as firm favourites. And yesterday, it happened once again. Sadly, valiantly, their captain fought and fought, but Graeme Smith’s heroics weren’t enough to help the South Africans overcome, of all teams, England. Following this loss, they crash out of the group stage of a tournament they host! And one cannot even begin to compare them to their football team, which is not expected to progress beyond the group stage in next year’s FIFA World Cup.
[As an aside, an article talking about SA's loss yesterday that sort of inspired this post]
Anyway, getting to the point, Smith’s words in the post match conference, mirrored his words in the post match from 2007 when his side again made a pre-mature exit. “no, we didn’t choke.” It was almost pre-meditated. A statement made to preempt the obvious question from the pressers: “Did your team choke?” It’s a question put to the Saffers everytime they exit from a major tournament. No other team is hounded with that particular question. [And I hope to God, no one should be.]
We’ve seen many great teams in sport. We’ve also seen great teams that come close, and are loved, yet stumble at the last hurdle. I’m no baseball fan, but everyone knows about Boston Red Sox (of course, now they are well over their mental block). And right now, in football, Liverpool could come close to earning the ‘chokers’ tag when they came close last season. But they haven’t been close enough to challenge prior to that, to even begin to feel what the South Africans feel. Perhaps Chelsea, in their recent Champions League attempts, could come close?
While it’s always educational to look into the minds of the perennial champions, to see what makes them tick, it’s also equally fascinating to read the mind of the perennial underachiever. Well, underachiever is not the right word here, because it’s far too generic a term. For example, underachievement could indicate loads of talent, but never performing at all. Arguably, England could be called underachievers. Choking could indicate, loads of talent, performances to match that talent on a consistent basis, yet failing to perform when it really matters. In a clutch game, as the Americans would say. Spain’s national football team could be called chokers to some extent, Euro success aside.
The question is, though, how much does the tag attached to the team affect the team? I find it hard to see parallels between the South African cricket team and any other sports team — perhaps the reader might help me out here — but when you fail on the scale South Africa have — right from the 1992 World Cup — do the players think before a game, “Hey, we have to prove to the rest of the world that we don’t choke”? And in that case, does the mere mention of the word choke prior to the game inflict them with a fear of failure so much that their limbs go weak into the game?
Chronic failure on that scale can have a debilitating effect. You are infinitely better off being inept, and going out cheaply, than performing supremely yet coming up short. In the former, you know you aren’t good enough, in the latter case, you are good enough — in fact, better — yet you can’t seem to find a way to win.
Being labelled a ‘choker’ is possibly the worst kind of label for a side. The problem with it is it doesn’t matter how dominant you are throughout the season; unfancied sides could ride a wave over the course of a season — even end up winning the title — because they may be unhinged by baggage and expectation, and are buoyed by self-belief earned due to their exploits over the season. Chokers, on the other hand, can earn bags of self-belief throughout the season, but all those bags could matter little, if counterbalanced by bags of history of having been there (yet failing miserably). It’s terrible, for want of a better word. The consequences of failure is worse; it’s possible for people to feel sorry for the losing side, but for a choker, feeling sorry for them comes with a sense of inevitability of said failure. Chokers, I think, would be justified in feeling angry about themselves — for throwing it away — and at the rest of the world — for bringing up their ‘throwing it all away’ in the first place. It’s hard to erase it from the mind in a hurry.
And the South Africans today return home bagful of guilt and anger. A better start to another tournament might help heal those wounds, but so does the realization that merely stringing together a lot of great performances, in the end, matters little.
The South Africans have indeed made choking an art form. I wonder if there are others quite like them in the world of sports.
