Cricket & the psychology of fear

Does not Dionysius seem to have made it sufficiently clear that there can be nothing happy for the person over whom some fear always looms? – Marcus Tullius Cicero

Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact – Henry James

Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we often might win, by fearing to attempt – Jane Addams

The next installment of the World Twenty20 is almost upon us, and England expects.  Unfortunately, the expectation is not one of triumph and glory, but rather of ignominy and defeat.

Where international cricket tournaments are concerned, England can have no “years of hurt” to comfort them like a stuffed animal at night, for they have never been victorious.  World Cup, Champions Trophy and World Twenty20: these three ghosts of cricket past, present and future continue to haunt England.  Of the current senior cricketing nations, England sit alongside only Bangladesh in a select club of non-winners.

The psychology of fear is a subject much loved by sports psychologists, modernist coaches and John Buchanan alike.  The eradication of fear from their athletes’ performances is the holy-grail.

Fear is a fairly broad term, and can include a variety of emotions such as terror, paranoia, sudden fright or a persecution complex.  Unless we are referring to Phil Tufnell backing away to leg, a prime mental stumbling block for sportsmen is the fear of failure, which can encompass paranoia, the persecution complex and doubt or distrust.  It is the gnawing fear that eats away at conviction and belief.  Occasionally it can be the onset of panic brought about by a sudden application of pressure.

Not only does fear inhibit boldness, causing sportsmen and women to retreat into their shell, it can also disrupt the decision making process.  How often do we see a batsman stifled and under pressure give up his wicket in a desperate attempt to get the scoreboard moving again?  This happens as often in a match-saving situation as it does in one where the run-rate must be maintained.

The twin evils of the sporting mindset

Watching England, particularly in the Ashes, during the last 20 years has been almost an object lesson in the cricketing psychology of fear.  In equal measures they have fallen victim to those twin evils of the sporting mindset – self-doubt and pressure.

Take the 2nd Test against Pakistan in 2001 as an example.  At tea on the 5th day, England had reached 196/2 in their second innings.  The game was meandering towards a draw, and England were anticipating a series victory having won the 1st Test by an innings.  Shortly after tea, Graham Thorpe lost his wicket.

In their first innings, England had reached 282/2 with Thorpe scoring a century.  As soon as Thorpe was out, the innings fell apart, and they were dismissed for 357, just 75 runs for the final 8 wickets.

Rather than being a one-off, the pattern was repeated as England succumbed to the pressure in that final session, this time losing their last eight wickets for just 60 to lose the match by 108 runs.  Yet there should not have been any pressure.  England had done the hard work, had a 1-0 lead already in the series, and needed merely to while away a couple of hours to see the job through to a conclusion.

Just 24 hours previously, the talk had been of a famous England run-chase after a good start to their innings saw them reach 85/0 in just 22 overs.  In 83 overs on that final day, they managed to score only 176.

So what happened?  The Pakistanis played their part by creating the conditions that triggered England’s collapse.  Recognising that England had started confidently, they initially set out to slow the scoring rate rather than take wickets.  Finding themselves struggling to score runs, England began to let doubt gnaw away at them throughout the afternoon without trying to change tack in order to break the shackles.

After tea, the dismissal of Thorpe and the taking of the new ball was the catalyst for the panicky collapse, a repeat of the first innings.  Pakistan had played well, and the umpires missed at least three no-balls on wicket taking deliveries, but England should still have held out for a draw.

Fear is always present in some way within sportsmen – the coaching holy-grail is impossible to instill completely.  Resistance to it can be nurtured and strengthened, but it has to be present to begin with.

One of the key aspects of the psychology of fear is the emotional response that the sensation of fear triggers, often referred to as “fight or flight”.  On that occasion in 2001, England’s batsmen chose flight, as they were wont to do throughout the nineties.  It took Nasser Hussain’s steely single-mindedness for England to learn to repel fear, and Michael Vaughan’s attacking instincts for them to learn how to impose fear upon their opponents.

The Dionysius of cricket

The Warne effect

In contrast, watching Australia in the last 20 years has been an object lesson in the art of instilling fear in your opponent.  Of course, it helps a great deal if you have some of the greatest players in the history of cricket, but it is not necessarily a pre-requisite.

The greatest of those greats, Shane Warne, was probably the best exponent of this art.  In addition to being a genius of technique, Warne was (is) a genius of the mind-game, without needing to result to sledging insults (although he does that too).

Virtually every ball was accompanied by a shout that said “so close”, even the long-hops that were smacked for four.  This wasn’t misguided optimism, rather part of a calculated plan to create pressure on the batsman even where none existed.

Warne was the Dionysius of cricket, suspending a metaphorical Sword of Damocles above the head of each and every opponent.  He would stand at the end of his follow through, hands on hips, or perhaps with one hand lifted to his mouth, staring at the batsman almost with a look of wonderment, as if to say “how did you survive that one, mate”?

More often than not the batsman, on noticing the sword suspended above him, would swiftly find some way to vacate his throne.

Some were better than others at resisting Warne’s pressure.  Sachin Tendulkar was perhaps the most successful, whereas Daryl Cullinan was famously almost destroyed by it.

Cricket is a game played mostly in the mind. No amount of technique and panache can compensate for the mental frailties that have reigned so tyrannically over potential throughout the years.  It is the reason why a battler, a yeoman such as Paul Collingwood can stand firm against the odds, and the reason why a stylist like Ian Bell can often crumble in the face of them.

It is the psychology of fear that makes Test cricket great.