India are dominating the cricket World Cup. Will they “choke”?

FEW COUNTRIES enjoy sovereignty of a global sport the way India rules over cricket. Home to most of the sport’s fans, India controls most of its money and increasingly produces most of its best players. The full extent of this cricketing might has been on display during the men’s World Cup, the sport’s quadrennial marquee event, which India is hosting. In front of raucous crowds and in conditions optimised for their playing style, the Indian team have pulverised all-comers.

The perfect record of the men in blue—eight wins from eight—will surely be extended on November 12th, in their final group game against bottom-ranked Netherlands. India’s net run rate, a measure of a team’s dominance in matches, is nearly double that of South Africa, currently second among the ten competing sides. But, as the tournament moves into the knockout stages, the Indians, led by Rohit Sharma, will be well aware that statistical supremacy does not deliver a trophy.

New Zealand loom in the semi-final on November 15th. The formbook suggests the Kiwis pose little threat—India beat them comfortably during the group stage. Yet Indian fans are wary. In the World Cups of 2019 and 2015 their team cruised to the semi-finals, only to be knocked out by New Zealand and Australia respectively. India have suffered similar heartbreaks in other international tournaments over the past decade.

After the latest such loss—in the semi-finals of the T20 World Cup last year—Kapil Dev, a former captain, offered a simple reason for the consistent underachievement: India “come close and then choke”.

As an explanation for failure, choking resonates with fans and pundits everywhere—and not just in cricket. Manchester City won the English Premier League title last season after Arsenal had spent 248 days in first place. Arsenal, football fans claimed gloatingly, had “bottled it”.

Fans find it easier to attribute a poor result to a team’s mental shortcomings than to their opponents’ skill, or to the vagaries of sport. Reality is less convenient. Choking in its true sense is rare among elite athletes. According to Christopher Mesagno and Denise Hill, two sports psychologists, choking is when “an acute and considerable decrease in skill execution and performance” is caused by “increased anxiety under perceived pressure”.

Held against this standard, most choking assertions crumble. At the recent T20 World Cup, India batted well, but were then swept aside by some remarkable batting by a strong English side. An analysis of India’s matches by ESPNCricinfo, a cricket website, suggests that the team’s performance does not drop in high-pressure matches.

In most cases failure has a more banal explanation: a better opponent. Arsenal’s failure to clinch the Premier League was not because of a lack of the mythical bottle. They were overtaken by a Manchester City team that won 11 league matches in a row.

Choking, of course, does occur. South Africa’s cricket team provides one compelling example. At the semi-final of the World Cup in 1999, the Proteas were one run away from victory when madness ensued. Lance Klusener and Allan Donald botched a simple run—both players ended up at the same end of the pitch—to present Australia with a place in the final. Calling that episode an “acute and considerable decrease in performance” would be putting it mildly.

And the “choker” label has stuck. South Africa’s exits from tournaments are invariably analysed for signs of mental fragility. The c-word will doubtless be bandied about liberally before (and perhaps after) South Africa face Australia on November 16th in the other semi-final.

Yet while it is hard to shed the tag of “choker”, it is becoming easier to help athletes perform under pressure. New research has revealed more about how pressure impedes athletes’ short-term memories, causing them to overthink and fumble basic tasks. More is also known about potential solutions. These include pre-match routines (such as deep breathing) and dual-task exercises (where participants practise a sporting skill while performing another task, to make the former second nature).

Most important, there is an appetite for such interventions. The English men’s football team have specialists to help them overcome the yips when shooting penalties. Iga Swiatek, the world’s best female tennis player, travels with a full-time psychologist. Such examples are increasingly commonplace.

Yet for all their good work, sports psychologists cannot reduce the quality of the opposition. Nor can they account for luck. India could still stumble in the semi-final or even final. The current World Cup’s slogan is “it takes one day”. The bromide implies that triumph is always within reach, but in elite sport so is failure.■