How the Proteas buried a 26-year curse

FROM CHOKERS TO CHAMPIONS

- MOGAMMAD SHARHIDD TALIEP

WHEN Kyle Verreynne hit the win-ning runs at the “home of cricket” (Lord’s Cricket Ground in London) on June14, South Africa erupted in celebration.

The Proteas had just claimed their first major cricket cup in decades. And nothing less than the International Cricket Council World Test Champion-ship at that, the premier international competition for five-day (Test) cricket that’s played over two years.

Branded as “chokers” for 26 years for underperforming or spoiling their advantage in crunch situations in major tournaments, the national men’s cricket team has transformed to become world champions.

I'ma sport scientist with a focus on cricket. Research can help us understand how the Proteas have managed to do this and what core qualities of a winning team they’ve embodied on their way to turning things around.

What is choking?

The term “chokers” started being used to describe the Proteas team after the 1999 International Cricket Council Men’s Cricket World Cup semi-finals for games played over one day. The Proteas gave up a commanding posi-tion against Australia. This curse tor-mented them in high-stakes games, particularly World Cup matches, where they often ended second-best.

In sports psychology, choking has been defined as:

An acute and considerable decrease in skill execution and performance when self-expected standards are normally achievable, which is the result of increased anxiety when highly motivated individuals are sub-jected to pressure.

Anxiety disrupts a player's auto-matic motor response, leading to poor decisions and inaccurate skill execu-tion. This happens at critical moments of the game. And the aftermath of these continued inferior performances can lead to a long-lasting stigma.