The "Big Moments" Fraud
The Wisden website abuses Chris Jordan using an old, perverse trope favored by professional observers of sport everywhere.
The semi final between England and New Zealand was played out as follows (Chris Jordan’s apparent villainy is in bold):
1st Innings (ENG batting, 166/4) 1,0,1,0,0,4,0,0,0,2,0,4,0,1,0,0,0,0,4,4,0,5,2,0,1,1,4,0,1,1,1,W,1,0,1,0,1,1,1,0,1,1,1,1,0,4,2,0,1,W,1,1,0,1,4,1,0,1,0,1,4,1,4,0,4,1,1,1,3,1,1,0,1,1,1,1,1,0,1,4,1,1,0,2,1,1,2,1,1,4,1,1,6,W,1,0,1,1,1,1,6,0,0,2,1,6,1,1,1,1,0,6,1,2,4,1,0,1,1,W,4,1,1,2,2
2nd Innings (NZ batting) 4,0,W,1,0,3,0,0,0,1,3,1,0,0,0,W,0,0,0,0,0,1,0,0,4,2,4,1,0,1,0,4,1,0,1,0,4,0,0,2,1,1,1,0,0,1,1,1,1,0,1,0,1,1,2,0,1,1,2,4,0,4,1,1,1,6,1,0,0,0,2,0,4,1,1,1,2,1,6,1,1,2,0,W,1,1,1,1,2,4,1,1,W,0,0,0,1,1,1,6,2,1,4,1,6,2,1,0,6,1,6,1,W,2,6,6,1,1,4
Ben Gardner, the managing editor of the Wisden Cricket website, published an article entitled Chris Jordan fails to repay England’s faith when it mattered most. The condemnation was as swift and as it was unusual. Darren Sammy and Jofra Archer made their points in tweet threads.
They are both right. Sammy’s point can be easily seen from the fact that Jonny Bairstow, who has played 16 times for ENG before the Semi Final and had only 2 notable contributions (and scored at 124 runs per 100 BF), made 13 in 17 batting in the powerplay. Bairstow’s contribution was at least as damaging as Jordan’s. And Morgan has shown the exact same amount of faith in Bairstow as he has in Jordan (who played 15 times for ENG in T20Is in 2021)
“When it mattered most”. That is the nub of Gardner’s point. His meanderings through Jordan’s record are neither here nor there, especially as the only alternatives he offers are Archer and Mills who were both injured, and would have played had they been available.
Whatever Gardner’s motives might be, and however high or low minded they might be, it remains a fact that this idea that some parts of cricket matches matter more than others is taken as a truism in much of cricket press. Gardner is not the first to adopt this. The lure of the “clutch” play runs across sports, despite there being no evidence at all that there are players who produce better outcomes in such situations than they do in other, “less important” situations.
There’s a reason why there’s no evidence for the existence of “clutch” performances. Its because “clutch” situations don’t exist in sport. The Laws of Cricket for instance (these laws constitute the game, they do not explain it or describe it - they bring it into being), require that the outcome of every delivery is counted in the scorebook, and that the laws apply equally to every delivery.
It follows from this, that each individual delivery outcome listed at the beginning of this post contributed exactly equally to the outcome of the semi final. The feelings of the players, the perceptions of “situations” or “moments” within the game, and individual tactical choices do not change this fact.
The fact that the 8th over bowled by Adil Rashid went for 0,0,1,1,1 and 1 contributed exactly equally to the outcome as the fact that the 19th over bowled by Chris Woakes went for 2,6,6,1,1,4. This is because, all possible outcomes were equally available in both overs. It is not inevitable that these overs turned out the way they do. They turned out the way they did because the competing players made choices. And every choice on every ball was exactly equally significant. It is not the case that some choices were trivial while others were momentous. The Laws of Cricket do not enable any such distinction. If there was a Law which allowed the runs in some overs to count double (or some such), then that over would be twice as significant. But there isn’t such a Law.
And so, the decision not to attack Rashid in the 8th is as significant to the game as the decision to attack Jordan, or the decision to attack Rashid in the 18th. There is no law which precludes scoring sixes in the 8th over of a T20 game. That they were not scored contributes exactly as much to the outcome of the game as the fact that they were in the 19th or 17th or 11th or any other over in the entire match.
So, the idea that Jordan was bowling “when it mattered most” has no basis in any reasonable description of T20 (or any cricket). All overs matter exactly equally because the possibilities available in all overs are exactly identical.
There are several objections to this point in my experience. There are those who say that it does not “account for feelings, emotions, pressure”. It does. It accepts that players are equally human every ball of the match. The proposition that taking 0,0,1,1,1,1 from Rashid’s 8th over is an unemotional, coldly rational, calm choice made at a normal heart rate, while the 18th or 19th overs are contested in high dudgeon is untenable. It seems to me to be a spectacular exercise in projection on the part of the observer. But even if the point about heart rate was physiologically true, it still would not change the fact that the outcome of the 8th over and the outcome of the 19th contributed equally to the outcome of the game. The contribution of each was 2.5% (since there are 40 possible overs).
This false opposition which is set up between logic and emotion is, in my view, due to the observer not being capable of distinguishing a competitive event from a dramatic event. The other false opposition, between “statistics” (by which people seem to refer to any introduction of the actual record of a cricket match) and "context” or “intangibles” (by which people seem to refer to things which allegedly exist but which cannot be recorded) is just plainly bogus. There is no game if no one is keeping count. This is, again, not a matter of opinion, but a matter of fact. To say that there is no cricket if no one is keeping count is simply to say that there is no cricket unless it is constituted by the Laws of Cricket.
Note that none of this involves any “statistics”, or even “mathematics”. Nothing is introduced here that is not already specified by the Laws of Cricket. The burden falls on those who claim that things beyond the Laws of Cricket are relevant, to explain why they think this is so.
As Gardner’s example (and countless others, such as the Match Ka Mujrim entertainment which is so common on Indian television and Indian sports pages or the abuse hurled at the Pakistan fast bowler Hasan Ali) shows, the “big moments” or “when it mattered most” trope is vicious and hateful. It is a factory for manufacturing villains and heroes, as though a cricket match is a B-movie. It produces clickbait headlines (because people love the narrative arcs of movies more than they appreciate the actual competitive arrangements of sport).
Let Gardner and his friends at the Wisden website have no doubt that they are not describing cricket. I’m wish I could be confident that they think they are, and that they would be horrified to learn otherwise. What’s far more likely is that they know exactly what they are doing, and will continue to do it - pretend they’re cricket fans, while abusing cricketers by describing cricket in the most perverse ways - because it is likely to attract greater traffic. They are not the first to do this, and they won’t be the last. But as this is the Wisden brand, it will be done in posh ways, couched in ritual praise at the outset. The vicious abuse will take the form “Look, I admire the guy, but…”. It is abuse all the same.
Gardner has adopted a narrative device which is all too common in partisan or parochial descriptions of sport and produced the usual abusive nonsense. This is only partly his fault, for he is, if we are honest, only reproducing what the readers have come to accept is true. Hundreds, if not thousands of apparent cricket fans will have read Gardner’s contribution and nodded along as though he’s merely pointing out something that is self-evidently true, that Jordan conceded 22 in the 17th over of New Zealand’s run chase, and he let England down. In cricket, none of that is true.
Your argument makes complete sense..it is our need to hear a story that makes people write such tripe..
The problem why this big moment narrative gets peddled more is also due to all the former players turned commentators pushing this narrative on TV and also some of the post match comments by losing team captains like Babar Azam calling out Hasan Ali dropped catch etc … will need a lot more sustained by many good sports journalists to change this