Headingley 2019
Ben Stokes survived an LBW appeal to lead England to a one wicket win to keep the Ashes alive at Headingley exactly one year ago today. In the process he hit eight sixes, shared a last wicket stand of 76 in 62 balls with Jack Leach (the England number eleven who had made 92 opening the batting in a Test in seamer friendly conditions a month before), and sent the punditocracy into overdrive.
The distilled essence of the consensus view of Stokes’s innings is that he encountered a hopeless situation, and in the nearly unbearable pressure of expectations in this hopeless situation, produced an unforgettable exhibition of hitting. On the other side, the hapless Tim Paine gave an awful exhibition of “captaincy”. He got his review decisions comically wrong and his tactics played into Stokes’ hands as the Amazon documentary about Justin Langer’s leadership of Australia after the #Sandpapergate debacle made abundantly clear.
Back here on earth, the Headingley result was magical. When England lost their 9th wicket their position in the match was hopeless. With little to lose and no other options at hand, Stokes swung for the fences and it came off. Stokes is an outstanding power hitter. But even he needed the rub of the green to go his way, much as it had during the world cup final earlier in the season when Trent Boult uncharacteristically lost his positional bearings and stepped on the boundary rope while completing a catch on the boundary.
That is the way it goes in sport sometimes. Occasionally, outlier events occur.
Sadly, what we tried to do with this outlier event is to try and explain it as though it wasn’t an outlier. We concluded that Tim Paine is a terrible captain and Ben Stokes is terrific under pressure. On both counts, we’re profoundly wrong. We are wrong because each conclusion is based on a pet fiction of ours.
The first is ‘captaincy’. Within this, we have invented a additional skill - the ability to request reviews effectively. This is not a skill. The fielding side which is best at requesting reviews gets them wrong two times out of three. Whether or not a fielding side requests a review depends on the match situation. The team which is behind in the game and is losing is more likely to request reviews in hope than a team which is ahead in the game. But more importantly, unlike in other sports like American Football, requesting reviews does not involve reviewing additional information. A request for a review is based on a hunch. It is a shot in the dark, especially for the fielding side, and especially in the case of LBW appeals.
If one is evaluating actions based on their results, it is unsound to do this anecdotally. If the decision to use up his last review at Headingley counts against him, and if the decision to bet on the fact that one of Stokes’s risks would not come off sooner rather than later is to count against him because these bets evidently didn’t go his way, then the fact that Tim Paine is the first Australian captain since Steve Waugh to retain the Ashes in England is a monster outcome which ought to count on the other side of the ledger.
Richie Benaud is supposed to have observed that captaincy is 90% luck and 10% skill, but it shouldn’t be tried without that 10%. This testimony is often used in support of the view that captaincy is a significant cricketing skill. The obvious question for Mr. Benaud here would be:
“If we consider realistic candidates for modern Test captaincy (as opposed to era of the amateur when social class played a big role in determining who could be considered for the job) - Test players who are established in the first XI in their primary skill - how likely is it that any one of them will not possess that 10% skill?”
I’d suggest that it is extremely unlikely. The history of captaincy in international cricket suggests that I’m right in thinking this. Except for a small number of examples which can be counted on the fingers of one hand (I can think of only two - Lee Germon of New Zealand and Darren Sammy of West Indies), international teams do not consider captaincy to be a skill worthy of a spot in a Test or ODI squad. They pick players who are good enough with bat or ball (or both in rare cases), and then pick a captain out of this set. Actual Test captains keep telling us that results are a consequence of the quality of a team, and more specifically, the quality of the bowling. Yet we pretend that captaincy is a skill.
The second is the proposition that Ben Stokes is exceptional under pressure. This misunderstands the nature of skill. Ben Stokes appears to pull off the big shots when the scoreboard is against his team not because he’s good in that situation, but because he’s very good at the big shots. Stokes has batted in the 4th innings 20 times for England and crossed 50 thrice. Since that 135 not out, Stokes’s has batted four times in the 4th innings and made 1, 34, 14 and 9. If you think the 135 shows he’s exceptional under pressure, then you must also think that the 1, 34, 14 and 9 show that he’s poor under pressure.
The reality is that ‘pressure’, like ‘captaincy’ is an observer’s invention which arises from a combination of cognitive biases which plague the unskilled enthusiasts who populate the sports pages. Perhaps they are not unskilled. In fact, having spoken to some of them in private, I know that some of them are highly skilled, disciplined, perceptive observers of the game who are constantly trying to improve themselves the way one would in any profession. But they can’t let this get in the way of having to pander to their readership’s prejudices and cater to narratives which their audience expects, however ill-founded such narratives might be. As anybody who is familiar with the laws of cricket and has played cricket knows, any game of cricket is a contest involving a finite number of episodes (deliveries) which are exactly equally significant. Any inflection point which might appear, does so as a consequences of outcomes on previous deliveries. So if the delivery or set of deliveries at this imagined inflection point are considered significant, then the deliveries which led to the inflection point must, by definition, be at least as significant.
Whether a game is magical or mundane, international cricket involves high achievers who are extremely skilled at what they do. It is a capital error to try and put oneself in their shoes as a way of trying to read their minds. Yet, we do this all the time. Of course I would be frightened out of my mind if I was facing up to Jofra Archer. I’m an terrible batsman. It is still an awful mistake for me to try to imagine what goes through Steve Smith’s mind when Archer peppers him with the short stuff. My experience playing cricket on the weekends has about as much to do with Smith’s experience in the middle of a Test match as a my experience of making an omelette in the kitchen has to do with running a professional restaurant kitchen.
The cricketers give us a skillful display game in and game out. And then we relentlessly force their work into our petty morality plays. It is a tragedy when we do this to the average international game. It is a greater tragedy when we do it to a Test match like Headingley. Perhaps we would do well to remember the actual Headingley Test. That was a great Test match and a magical run chase. And magic is invariably ruined by magical thinking.