How we misunderstand risk in sport

Aggression, defence, success, failure, innovation - they are all about our willingness to take risks and how we judge them

Ed Smith in Cricinfo 

July 28, 2014

Same risk, different outcome: when a batsman goes after a bowler, he could end up being dismissed or hitting a six © Getty Images

The World Bank recently asked me to give a speech at a forum in London called "Understanding Risk". Initiall, I was unsure how I could approach the subject. How could I, an ex-sportsman turned writer, address financial experts on the question of risk?

On reflection, I realised there is another profession, followed around the world and relentlessly scrutinised, that relies almost entirely on the assessment of risk. Without risk, there can be no reward. Without risk, there are no triumphs. Without risk, there can be no progress.

And yet this entire profession, this whole sphere of human endeavour, doesn't really understand risk at all. It uses the term sloppily, even incorrectly. It criticises good risks and celebrates bad risks. It cannot distinguish between probabilities and outcomes.

It has changed its approach to risk, swapping one flawed approach for the opposite mistake. In the old amateur days, when it was run and managed like an old boys' club, there was little or no calculation of risk - merely unscientific anecdotes and old wives' tales. But the brave new dawn of social science didn't prove any better. In fact, it might be even worse. People put too much faith in maths, metrics and quantification. It has lurched from old boy's network to a pseudo-science - without pausing en route where it ought permanently to reside: with the acknowledgment that risk requires subjective but expert judgement. There is no perfect formula. If there was, everyone with a brain would succeed.

The sphere I describe, of course, is not finance or banking but professional sport. Sporting strategy - sometimes analytical and planned, sometimes instant and intuitive - always revolves around the assessment of risk. Taking risks is what sportsmen do for a living. And yet the analysis of risk does not match this practical reality. We usually talk in clichés not truths, often criticising good risks and praising bad risk-taking.

Here are four ways the sports world often misinterprets risk.

Risk is everywhere

In cricket, every attacking shot played by a batsman carries an element of risk, no matter how small. Stop playing shots and you cannot score runs. "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take," as Wayne Gretzky, the greatest ice hockey player of all time, put it.

And it is amazing when you stop playing attacking shots how much better bowlers bowl. Effective risk-taking has an intimidatory effect. Total risk-aversion the opposite: it emboldens your opponent, making him feel safe and relaxed.

In football, when a midfield player advances up the pitch, he is trying to orchestrate a goal while also reducing his own team's defensive protection. In risking creating a goal, he increases the risk of conceding one. Defenders, too, constantly weigh risks. Pressing the opposition, trying to get the ball back from them, is a risk. In moving up the pitch without possession, you create space behind you - if they are good enough to keep the ball and get past you.

But the alternative - safety-first defending - brings risks of another kind. If you never press, and always retreat into the safety of deep defensive organisation, then you rarely regain the ball. You dig your own trench, unable to threaten or frighten the opposition, merely sitting there waiting for the next wave of attack.

Tennis is all about risk. With your groundstrokes, if you are determined never to lose a point by hitting the ball long, not even once, then sadly you won't play with enough depth to make life difficult for your opponent. You will make zero errors and still lose.

And when it's your turn to return, if you never run round your backhand in the hope of hitting a forehand winner, then you will allow your opponent to settle into a comfortable serving rhythm. In the pursuit of good returning, you have to risk getting aced. You have to risk failure in the short term to give yourself a chance in the long term. You have to dare to be great.

Being right is not the same thing as events turning out well

You can be right and fail. You can be wrong and succeed.

	Sport is about problem-solving. And the best way to discover new, better methods is to allow people to experiment through trial and error. Don't see what everyone else is doing and copy it. Find a better way

Sport rarely allows for this. We say that winning "justified the decision", a classic failure to distinguish between ex ante and ex poste thinking. Instead, the real question should be: would I do the same thing again, given the information I had at the time? Coaches and captains often make the right calls and lose. And they often make the wrong calls and win. It is stupid to judge a man's judgement on a sample size of one event.

The same point applies to risks taken by players. An unthinking tribal fan will shout "hero" when a risk-taking batsman hits a six, then scream "idiot" when the same shot ends up in a fielder's hands.

What a champion to take on the bowler! What a fool to take such a risk! The inconsistency here is not the batsman's, it is the spectator's. Coward/hero, fool/champion, disgrace/legend. The same risk can lead to either assessment.

Many crucial risks are invisible 

There are risks that no one sees that still have to be taken. Critics delude themselves that the only form of bravery in sport is guts and determination. At least as important is nerve, or, put differently, the capacity to endure risk imperceptibly.

When I was commentating with Sourav Ganguly at Lord's last week, he told me that Virender Sehwag used to shout, "He missed a four!" while he was in the dressing room watching team-mates batting. Ganguly quite rightly added that missing an opportunity to do something good is just as much of a mistake as making a visible error.

Many teams imperceptibly yield an advantage through timidity, fearfulness, and anxiety about standing out for the wrong reasons - an advantage they never subsequently reverse.

During the last Ashes series, I used this column to develop the metaphor of looking at sport as an old-fashioned battlefield. As the front lines engage and each army tries to advance, the direction of travel will be determined by tiny acts of skill and bravery - and equally imperceptible acts of risk aversion.

Somewhere on the front line, an infantryman inches a foot closer to his ally, hiding his own shield slightly behind his friend's. Hence one man becomes fractionally safer - but if the action is repeated a thousand times, the front line becomes significantly narrower and weaker as a whole. No one individual can be singled out as a hopeless failure. But the group suffers a collective diminution.

So it is in sport. When a batsman fails to hit a half-volley for four because he is too cautious, an opportunity is wasted to exploit an advantage offered to his team.

We talk a great deal about momentum, but not enough about how momentum is created. Once the whole army is retreating, even the bravest soldiers can fail to hold the line. We talk of courage when the tide has already turned. So in place of the usual clichés, "out-fought", "out-toughed", "out-hungered", I have a simpler word: outplayed. Or, even better, "quietly, perhaps indiscernibly, defeated by superior risk-taking".

The essential risk of being prepared to look silly

This is how sport moves forward. In 1968, a professional athlete had a crazy idea. Madder still, he had this idea just before the tournament event of his life. He wanted to rip up the coaching manual and do it all his own way. His coaches told him to forget about it, to stick with the old way of doing things, not to rock the boat.

He ignored them. He was a high-jumper, and he instinctively wanted to go over the bar head first, back down - not, as everyone else did, leg first, face down. At the 1968 Mexico Olympics, despite everyone telling him he was mad, he went ahead with his revolutionary technique. And how did it work out? He won a gold medal and set a new world record. He was called Dick Fosbury and he'd just invented the Fosbury Flop.

Sport is about problem-solving. A challenge is set: kick the ball into the net; hit the ball over the boundary; jump over the bar. From then on, solutions evolve, sometimes deliberately, sometimes by accident. And the best way to discover new, better methods is to allow people to experiment through trial and error. Don't see what everyone else is doing and copy it. Find a better way.

The left-field question is the one to ask. Why shouldn't I jump over the high-jump bar head first? Why shouldn't I aim my sweep shot towards off side where there aren't any fielders (the reverse sweep, the switch hit)?

Sport moves forward when it is irreverent, resistant to authority. The greatest cricketer of all time, Don Bradman, used a technique that no one has dared to try out a second time. His bat swing started way out to the side, rather than as a straight pendulum line from behind him.

Let me repeat. The method that made Bradman one and a half times better than the second-best player was consigned to the rubbish bin of sporting ideas. Bradman was prepared to look stupid by risking a unique rather than textbook technique. Others have been unwilling or unable to follow.

Bradman, however, benefited from one huge slice of luck. He escaped the greatest risk that can befall any genius: formal education. He learnt to bat on his own, using the empirical method, without a coaching manual. As a child he would repeatedly hit a golf ball against the curved brick base of his family's water tank.

Here is a startling thought. How many Bradmans were persuaded to try the usual technique? How many Fosburys were talked out of taking a chance?

In the course of trying to be different and better, you have to bear the risk of being different and worse.

The importance of failure

Success can dazzle, even blind. It's in failure that those like Jonathan Trott can address their weaknesses

Rob Steen in Cricinfo

March 19, 2014

 

Jonathan Trott: mired in a personal trough © AFP

What happened to me? Did I lose my talent? Am I ever going to be good again?

Find me a public performer who hasn't echoed Bill Murray's self-pitying, crestfallen lament in Wes Anderson'sThe Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou. Jonathan Trott might have served his cause better had he plumped for such candour and simplicity - it might even have spared him Michael Vaughan's intemperate outburst - but no matter. Depression, stress, burnout, anxiety, panic - variations on the theme of mental unfitness are endless.

"I remember day two or three, it was a bit of a blur, I was getting headaches and all sorts of things and I wasn't eating properly towards the end and that's when the sleep started getting disruptive and emotionally that was when I was worst and it just boiled over. I had nothing left in the tank - mentally and emotionally pretty drained." The number of appearances of the word "and" in the first of those sentences tells us a lot.

As Trott recounted his feelings during last November's Brisbane Ashes Test to Sky Sports viewers, the memories jostled for breathing space; a disorderly queue of negative emotions was being flushed out. Eye contact was strong and certain, but that doesn't mean the scars don't hurt. Amid more measured comments, yes, those references to "crazy" and "nutcase" were supremely insensitive - one of the few things Vaughan was right about in his own insensitive, somewhat hypocritical tirade (well, he did resign the captaincy of his country mid-series). But perhaps Trott felt that distancing himself from a graver clinical condition was a necessary part of his recovery. The message was plain: "I can be good again… I will be good again."

A few years back, "burnout" was a genuine and growing concern: even before the IPL was a glint in the BCCI's eye, multiplying formats and a concertina-like international programme were placing an ever-increasing strain on the leading performers. Then came the domestic T20 eruption; now all bets were off. Now "burnout" was the fear that dare not speak its name. If the players chose to spread themselves even thinner, well, that was their funeral. Frankly, my dear, who gave a damn? Trott's travails should compel us to think anew, with greater compassion. The employers who arranged 61 Tests for their charges over the past five years have far more to answer for on that score than they do over the way they handled his sudden fall from grace.

Older readers might find themselves harking back 40 years to a similar episode involving Geoff Boycott, whose intensity Trott has always seemed bent on emulating, as Mark Ramprakash did before him. The superficial cause was Boycott's repeated humiliations by bowlers of trifling gifts, primarily Eknath Solkar (such is the contempt in which the Yorkshireman holds the late Indian left-arm swinger, the latter is not even accorded the respect of a forename in Boycott's first autobiography, published in 1987).

"Batting to me is more than a mechanical use of techniques," Boycott explained. "I have to feel in a good frame of mind if I am to do well." There was a lot preying on it: difficulties over his benefit season, a rotten start to the summer by Yorkshire, and the usual internecine squabbles at Headingley, let alone the selectors' galling - as he saw it - preference for Mike Denness as England captain over his own claims.

	When nothing is working as it should, as had been the case for Trott since August 2013, convincing oneself that class truly is permanent and that form can only ever be temporary can tax the hardiest of hearts

The tipping point was another cheap dismissal in the first Test at Old Trafford. Nor did it help that it was "glaringly obvious that Denness wanted about as much to do with me as the Black Death". In taking stock, attested Boycott, "I realised, to my horror, that the desire and drive to play for England had gone. There was no satisfaction in it, very little involvement, even less pleasure… I couldn't take it any longer."

He duly informed Alec Bedser, the chairman of selectors, that he was "in no mental or emotional condition to play well for England". Yet when he put the phone down he felt no relief, and certainly no better. By the time he reached Bath, for Yorkshire's match against Somerset, he was "low, confused and physically ill… it might have been stress-related, I really don't know, but it was real and painful enough".

That September, by when his reign as Yorkshire captain was under threat, he did the unthinkable: he turned his country down. "Had anyone mentioned the mere possibility of it to the kid who played in the South Yorkshire back-streets or the young man who battled his way into the Yorkshire and England sides, he would have been invited to go forth and multiply. I would have considered him certifiable. But the culmination of events, circumstances and attitudes was too much to resist. I knew I could not go to Australia and do a good job for England." Not for another three years would he do international battle, yet recover he did, and prosper. Trott can draw hope from that.

In an interview published in the Times last Saturday, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, a Harvard professor billed by Rick Broadbent as an "expert on losing streaks", spelled out the commonalities linking sport and the world beyond. "In a losing streak everything deteriorates. There is often infighting and a lack of desire to show up for work because the situation is so unappealing. You see it in inner-city communities too, where neighbourhoods form gangs and fight against each other rather than working together." In an unusually perceptive moment, the all-too aptly named footballer Robbie Savage recalled the "soul-destroying" nature of a horrendous streak for Derby County not only robbing him of enthusiasm but reducing him to hatred for the game he once adored.

Trott, though, was mired in a personal trough. He'd gone 18 Test innings without a century before (and not that long ago). He'd also gone four ODIs without reaching 30 before, twice. This time, both happened concurrently, gnawing at his marrow.

One of the chief advantages of playing a uniquely multi-format sport is that success in one discipline can refuel another, or even persuade you to focus exclusively on a single discipline, the better to spare yourself all that angst and pain. But when nothing is working as it should, as had been the case for Trott since August 2013, convincing oneself that class truly is permanent and that form can only ever be temporary can tax the hardiest of hearts (unless, of course, your scorebook entry reads DG Bradman or SF Barnes).

****

	Has a sporting figure ever treated success and failure with such startling equanimity as Rafael Nadal? Stephen Dunn / © Getty Images  Enlarge

Repeated exposure to failure can be our undoing, but it can also reinvigorate. As that hoary old saying goes, what doesn't kill us makes us stronger. For professional sportsfolk, unlike most mortals, failure, however relative, is transparent and statistical, sometimes tweetworthy, always inescapable. For all of us, what counts is how we cope with it, and the way we heed its lessons.

The challenge to those recuperating from a setback is whether to risk the self-diminishing agonies of failure again. All the more reason, then, to salute those who take that risk for our amusement, and when there is little or no apparent need. Witness Rafa Nadal, whose improbable comeback from a career-threatening injury has been immeasurably more successful than the tennis writers and even his doctors predicted.

Had that regal racqueteer's stomach churned at the prospect of failure, he would have taken one of two courses: he would never have dared return to the court (it's not as if he needed the pesetas or kudos) or, in so doing, that renowned courtly behaviour would have lapsed. Neither happened, almost certainly because Nadal possesses the quintessential prerequisite of all champions: those competitive fires still burned. Has a sporting figure ever treated those twin imposters with quite such startling equanimity?

We make much of self-assurance as the most priceless of assets. Not only does it embolden, it also enhances the power of bluff. Confidence, achievement and reputation form a virtuous circle; how often do off-form achievers prevail purely by dint of repute? Ian Botham managed just 40 wickets in his last 23 Tests, and most of those owed more to name than skill. That confidence may or may not be innate; for those whose work exposes them to daily ordeals by competitive fire, in public view, it can certainly be mercurial. One numbing or humbling failure at an inopportune time can do more to deflate it than a hundred triumphs can buoy it. It depends on how deep it runs.

Yet strength can only be enhanced by reducing or eradicating vulnerability; by logical extension, therefore, failure can be more important than success. Failure means those glances in the mirror are likelier to be stares - broodier, more searching, less self-deluding. Weaknesses are likelier to be addressed, lessons learned. Success, conversely, can dazzle, even blind. It can also deter acknowledgement of the influence exerted by sheer blind luck, an ingredient never more potent than in the competitive arts. Perhaps only the tiny ranks of the doubt-free actively desire failure - as motivation, as a counter to complacency - but maybe that's what keeps us all going. Should we fear it? No, but a spot of constructive loathing can come in handy.

Bill Murray/Steve Zissou relocated his mojo - or at least a semblance of it - with a gun, saving his crew from a band of murderous pirates. A less violent loosening-up might do Trott a power of good.

Sledging's inevitable? That's just silly

The idea that trash talk is a by-product of competitiveness, and essential to spice up a contest, is laughable

Ed Smith

January 1, 2013

 

The marketers would have us think that the public loves scenes like this © Getty Images

At a recent social event I bumped into a fast bowler who I'd played against many times. It was the first time I'd seen him since my retirement, and at first I couldn't work out what was odd about the conversation. He seemed sheepish, unable to look me in the eye, embarrassed about something. But what? As he was still playing the game professionally, I tried to draw him out about how things were going. "As you'll remember," he eventually replied, nervously, "I'm an idiot on the pitch, but I'm working on that these days." The point, however, is that I didn't remember. I had completely forgotten that he had sledged quite a bit. He'd remembered, I'd forgotten.

We should recast the debate about sledging. It is not about the sledged or so-called "victim", who is usually completely unaffected. It concerns the values and standards of the sledger. How does he want to live his life? It was the boxer Floyd Patterson, I think, who said that "trash talk" (as boxers call sledging) is easy - the hard thing for lippy fighters was accidentally bumping into an opponent with his wife and kids at the airport.

The fourth Test, in Melbourne, was not an especially fractious affair, though it had the occasional silly moment. So this column is not specifically about the last Test, nor even targeted only at this Ashes series. Instead, I want to expose some of the myths that threaten to undermine the sport we all love. It is time to ask a simple question: who are the real victims of sledging?

There is a nasty little theory going around that Michael Clarke and his Australians have "toughened up" this series and that their improved performance is somehow bound up with this hardening of their external behaviour. Thus the diplomatic, pointedly courteous Clarke who led Australia to defeat in the English summer is reincarnated as an Aussie battler with a sharp tongue and a nasty streak in the victorious campaign of 2013-14. It is a seductive theory, just the kind of easy, populist history that displaces complex truths with simplistic myths.

I see the causal chain working in the opposite direction. It is not sledging that leads to winning, it is winning that leads to sledging. Ironically, that makes it worse. Far from being an explanation of success, it is simply a failure of grace and dignity. Far from being a subtle strategic art, sledging is just an embarrassing version of playground bullying. The people with the real problems are the players who lose their dignity. Within education, in schools suffering outbreaks of bullying, improved behaviour often follows from asking the bullies themselves how they can be helped to get over their evident psychological problems. The focus, quite rightly, is on their inadequacies.

England, apparently, had quite a bit to say for themselves during their 3-0 victory. Now Australia have relished an opportunity to talk down to England while they have been playing above them. What guts, what bravery! To swear at opponents when they can't get a run or a wicket!

There is a lot of selective history about "toughness" and superficial behaviour. The fact that Allan Border's Australia lost in 1985 and won in 1989 is often framed by reference to his famous quote, "I'm sick of being seen as a good bloke and losing. I'd rather be a prick and win." But in terms of explaining the crucial improvements in 1989, I would look first at the 41 wickets of Terry Alderman and the 1345 runs that came from the bats of Steve Waugh and Mark Taylor.

The way sportsmen perform is determined by the complex interaction of skill, talent, resilience and context. The way they behave is simply a personal choice. And many of the greatest players, in all sports, have chosen to behave very well. Garry Sobers, Don Bradman and Rahul Dravid did not sledge the bowlers they dismantled, any more than Michael Holding sledged the batsmen he terrorised. There is scarcely a scrap of critical evidence to pin against the behaviour of Rod Laver, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal on the tennis court.

Nadal is arguably the toughest competitor, both mentally and physically, in any sport in the world. Toughness, of course, is playing at the limit of your capacity as often as possible. Yet nothing could be more ridiculous than the idea that Nadal would become tougher by unleashing a stream of abuse at Andy Murray just before the start of a match. And yet that is exactly the presumption of people who believe in a correlation between sledging and toughness.

Which leads me to another of cricket's self-destructive myths: that demeaning behaviour is inevitable, that it is the logical result of "market forces" and "the pressures of modern professional sport". Not true. Last January, I met up with Brad Drewett, then chief executive of the ATP, at the Australian Open in Melbourne. Drewett was dying from motor neurone disease, and the meeting had the poignant subtext that it was likely to be the first and last time we would meet.

Drewett described how the impressive culture at the top of men's tennis today is unrecognisable from his own time as a player in the 1980s. Back then, flashy rivalries degenerated into personal contemptuousness and many big guns treated the junior players with dismissive disdain. With the tantrums and outbursts of John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors, tennis was indulging the idea that "nice guys finish last".

"Roger Federer helped to change all that," Drewett explained, "and Rafael Nadal fitted in with the standards he set. After them, everyone had to follow their example."

	Far from being a subtle strategic art, sledging is just an embarrassing version of playground bullying. The people with the real problems are the players who lose their dignity

Following the trajectory of the 1980s, tennis today ought to be an uninterrupted expletive-ridden tantrum. But it hasn't happened. Quite the reverse. A few good men radically altered the course of a whole sport. They changed the image of being a winner. They enhanced the expectations that follow from being a champion. And they will pass on to the next generation a sport in better health than the fractious environment they inherited. Alongside all their other achievements, Federer and Nadal disproved one of the silliest myths of professional sport: that there is some competitive disadvantage in being a decent person. In doing so, they demonstrated a truth rarely acknowledged: cultures are always in flux; they can improve as well as decline.

This fact has eluded not just cricketers but also broadcasters, and worst of all, even administrators. Pundits routinely opine that undignified behavior "adds spice to the contest" and "makes the sport dramatic to the viewer". Has anyone asked the public? The reply follows: "But look at the huge crowds at the MCG and encouraging TV viewing figures. Our brand strategy must be working!"

Well, a few new people with low attention spans are temporarily attracted to vulgarity, just as drivers slow down to look at car crashes on the other side of the road. But for the silent majority, cricket's past and cricket's future, the sport is not enhanced by macho posturing, it is demeaned by it.

The brand experts are mostly quack salesmen who know nothing at all about real brand value. Indeed, the phony profession of brand marketing is only a few decades old. In contrast, real brands - such as the Ashes, for example - have been around a lot longer than the whole concept of "branding".

Anyone who really understands brands - whether it is a business, a reputation or a family name - knows that they are very hard to build but all too easy to destroy. By legitimising playground bullying - indeed celebrating it - cricket believes it is winning some subliminal battle for relevance, for modernity, for a share of the sporting market.

I am not a brand expert, but I have a sense for how sports grow and evolve. And how they can decay and wither. Lowering behavioural expectations will not heighten interest in cricket, not over the long term. Only good cricket can do that.

Novak Djokovic's recipe for success

Wimbledon 2011: Novak Djokovic's recipe for success


Page last updated at

16:12 GMT, Sunday, 3 July 2011 17:12 UK

By David Ornstein

BBC Sport at Wimbledon

Wimbledon Championships

Venue: All England Club, London Date: 20 June-3 July Coverage: Live on BBC One, Two, 3D, HD, Red Button, online (UK only), Radio 5 live, 5 live sports extra; live text commentary from 0900 BST on BBC Sport website (#bbctennis); watch again on iPlayer

Djokovic too good for spirited Tsonga (UK only)

Novak Djokovic's progress to the Wimbledon final means he will become the new world number one when the next ATP rankings are released on Monday.



The 24-year-old's rise to the summit of men's tennis owes much to an incredible 43-match unbeaten streak, which spanned six months, seven tournaments and started in December last year.



It came to an end with defeat by Roger Federer at the French Open, but marked a remarkable turnaround for a player who struggled badly for much of 2010 - winning only two of 19 tournaments all season.



Djokovic's SW19 run has extended his 2011 win-loss record to 48-1 after his four-set victory over Rafael Nadal in Sunday's showpiece.



But what sparked the improvement and why is he so much better in 2011? BBC Sport spoke to Marian Vajda, a former world number 34 and the Serbian's coach since 2006.



HOW DO YOU REFLECT ON NOVAK'S WINNING SEQUENCE?



"Special, wonderful, amazing - there aren't enough superlatives to describe how this year has been for him, and for us as his team. It shows we're doing a good job and we should celebrate and admire what has happened. Since I started working with him in 2006 this has been his goal.



Continue reading the main story

We found he had a gluten allergy and since he's cut that out of his diet, he is able to breathe better and take in more oxygen. His body is much healthier and this is the key



Marian Vajda

"He found a way to play the guys, learned how to beat them, how to prepare properly, how to handle the pressure. It's a process. Before, he had lapses, nerves, we could see he often couldn't handle the pressure. Physically he was not good. Now, he's 24 years old, much stronger and his talent is coming to the surface.



"Unfortunately the loss to Federer ended his unbeaten run and stopped him from becoming world number one, so that was bitter and took away some mental strength. But my role as his coach was to get him to try to forget this defeat and prepare as well as possible for Wimbledon."



WHAT HAS HE DONE DIFFERENTLY TO MAKE SUCH A DRASTIC STEP UP?



"There was a tough period in his tennis career when, in 2009, he decided he wanted to switch to working with two coaches. Todd Martin came in, changed a couple of techniques and his serve was not working well.



Vajda (second from right) has worked with Djokovic since 2006 "At the start of 2010, he was in serious trouble. He managed to win a few matches and stay in the world's top three, but he had no serve. He had to get back to his old routines. In men's tennis, the serve is the number one issue. We worked hard and about 12 months ago he started to improve, but he was still far away from where he is now.



"You can see his serve is much better and he is so confident now that he tends to win the most important points - break points, match points etc. At the start of this year he began winning matches in straight sets, dropping very few games and even in the giant battles against Nadal and Federer he was able to dominate, which rarely happened in 2010."



WAS THERE ANYTHING ELSE YOU PAID SPECIAL ATTENTION TO?



"Yes, we also worked hard on the physical side. Novak needed to improve his endurance. He was not able to stay on the court for a long time. He would manage five sets but it would take a lot of energy away from him for the next match. Now he's able to maintain that because he's far better technically and physically.



"We did a lot of running and a bike work but, in addition, he improved his health. We found he had a gluten allergy and since he's cut that out of his diet, he is able to breathe better and take in more oxygen. His body is much healthier and this is the key.



"But most of all, when you have a good serve you shorten games and hold easily - and that makes you stronger mentally. There are still areas to work on - he can improve his approach to and position at the net - but he's getting better and better."



HOW PLEASED WERE YOU WITH HIS PREPARATION FOR WIMBLEDON?



"Novak recovered really well from Paris. He went straight to Monte Carlo to be with his girlfriend Jelena for a couple of days - to have some time off, relax, do different things that would take his mind completely away from tennis.



Final dream 'comes true' for Djokovic (UK only)

"He went to the beach, did some swimming, saw his family and helped Jelena ahead of her graduation for an economics diploma on Sunday 12 June. Then we came over and practised at Aorangi for the first time on Monday 13 June.



"From the moment he stepped on to the grass he looked unbelievable. He played two practice sets against Richard Gasquet at an incredibly high level, as if Wimbledon was only two days away.



"In his only pre-Wimbledon warm-up match, against Gilles Simon, it was scary how good he was. He was relaxed and looking happier on grass than ever before. That made me feel pretty confident.



"The Federer defeat was bitter but champions like Novak realise that it's no shame to lose matches like that and unbeaten runs have to come to an end. Emotionally it stayed with him for a while, but he's experienced enough to get over it and regain his focus. To become world number one was something we were all focused on achieving. We prepared in a very professional way. He was ready.



WHY IS THIS TOURNAMENT SO SPECIAL TO NOVAK?



"It's a tradition. As a young kid, everyone watches Wimbledon. When I was a young kid I remember when we didn't have that much sport on TV, but we always had Wimbledon.



"You want to reach for that trophy, you want to see it high above your shoulders. This is the most exciting moment of your career. You work for this. It's the biggest tournament in the world. The history, the tradition, the champions. It's unique."



DID YOU FEEL HE ARRIVED AT SW19 UNDER LESS PRESSURE?



"Yes, and I was really pleased about that. The unbeaten run coming to an end released him. This was the tournament for Andy Murray, for Federer, for Rafael Nadal. Rafa was defending champion and had to defend all his ranking points from last year.



"Novak recovered well and came here in good condition, but we knew the relative lack of pressure could help him go far."

Talent. Graft. Bottle?

Musa Okwonga:  The annual Wimbledon conundrum

The Independent

It's nerve; it's grit; it's the key ingredient that makes a true champion. As Andy Murray aims to break his Grand Slam duck, our writer gets to the root of what every winner needs

Sunday, 26 June 2011

Bottle. It's an odd word to describe the spirit that all athletes need when faced with unprecedented pressure, but it somehow seems to have stuck. There are several conflicting and convoluted suggestions as to its origin: the most recurrent is that "bottle" is derived from Cockney rhyming slang, "bottle and glass". If you've got plenty of "bottle and glass", so the slang goes, then that means that you've got plenty of "arse" when you're confronted with a career-defining test.
Bottle isn't like muscle: it's not visible to the naked eye. At first glance, most of the world's leading sportsmen and sportswomen look routinely impressive: fit, focused, intimidatingly intense. It's only when they're stepping towards that penalty spot or standing at that free-throw line that we get to peer beneath the veneer – to glance at the self-doubt that threatens to engulf them. And engulf them it does, time and again. Just look at Jana Novotna in the 1993 Wimbledon singles final, when she had a game point to go up 5-1 in the final set against Steffi Graf. Until that moment, we didn't know that Novotna would fold; maybe she didn't know, either. But a few games later, she was sobbing on the shoulder of the Duchess of Kent as Graf took the title.
We don't have to look beyond our shores to find ample examples of those who've bottled it. In football, there's the familiar litany of losses to Germany; to name but one, the 1990 World Cup, where England's Stuart Pearce hit his spot-kick into the goalkeeper's midriff and Chris Waddle sliced his high over the crossbar. More recently, in golf, and the sight of Rory McIlroy's surrender at Augusta in the 2011 Masters was especially spectacular. Leading by four shots heading into the final round, holding a one-shot advantage as he moved into the back nine, he then dropped six shots in three holes, finishing 10 shots behind the leader Charl Schwartzel and recording an eight-over-par score of 80.
However, McIlroy's reaction to his meltdown said much about his character, and about the nature of bottle. "Well that wasn't the plan!" he tweeted. "But you have to lose before you can win. This day will make me stronger in the end." Once he had experienced terror, and rapidly understood that the only factor holding him back was his own trepidation; he had laid the foundation for his eventual success. It's no coincidence that in his next major tournament, the 2011 US Open, he triumphed by eight shots.
McIlroy's astonishing response to his collapse shows that we can be unnecessarily harsh when we dismiss an athlete as a "bottler", as someone who'll never hold it together when it counts. For his entire cricket career, the England batsman Graeme Hick was accused of being a "flat-track bully", someone who was proficient against domestic teams but who lacked courage at international level. Hick's batting average in all matches, including a highest score of 405 not out, was 52.23, as against a Test average of 31.32. The history books therefore record a verdict of frailty at the highest level. A more striking case still is Mark Ramprakash, regarded as one of the finest technicians ever to have played the game, but whose performances for England fell far short of those for his counties of Surrey and Middlesex. To date, Ramprakash has over 100 first-class centuries, one of only 25 men to achieve that feat: his batting average in first-class matches stands at 54.59, while his Test career ended with an average of 27.32.
The statistics suggest that, in the cases of Hick and Ramprakash, their bottle was irreparably broken. Both can rightly point to the promise that they showed at Test level, having excelled on foreign soil: Hick can refer to his innings of 178 against India's spinners in Bombay, and Ramprakash can hold up his 154 against West Indian quicks in Barbados. But ultimately, the words of Mike Atherton, written in 2008 in The Times about Ramprakash, ring true for both of them. "Sport is neither just nor unjust," he opined; "it simply reflects time and again an absolute truth. Ramprakash was tried and tested many times in international cricket and more often than not he was found wanting."
Sian Beilock, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Chicago, in Choke: The Secret to Performing under Pressure says: "The more people practise under pressure, the less likely they will be to react negatively when the stress is on. This certainly seems to be true for professional golfers like Tiger Woods. To help Woods learn to block out distractions during critical times on the course, his father, Earl Woods, would drop golf bags, roll balls across Tiger's line of sight, and jingle change in his pocket. Getting Woods used to performing under stress helped him learn to focus and excel on the green."
This excellent practice served Woods well on his way to 14 major championships. But, as Beilock notes, there is no amount of rehearsal that can prepare you for pressure of unforeseen magnitude, such as Woods experienced after multiple revelations about his troubled private life.
If we know that bottle is so hard to have, then why are we so hard on those who don't have it? It's not as if we teach bottle in UK schools. You won't find classes in self-confidence in our curriculum or, as pop star Cher Lloyd has more recently dubbed it, "Swagger Jagger". No, we're too busy teaching humility to our athletes. As a nation, we are superb silver medallists. We smile politely on the podium and shake the winner's hand, when we should be snarling and tearing it off. And while bottle is not the same as arrogance, the two are closely related, both relying on a dogged belief in one's own ability, often in the face of reason.
Most British athletes who are regarded as bottlers are nothing of the sort. Instead, they are people who have risen far above their sporting station, who have gone beyond all reasonable expectation of their talent. Take Tim Henman, who went to six Grand Slam semi-finals, and who was at times a firm test for the all-time greatness of Pete Sampras. Take Andy Murray, who has finished as the runner-up in three Grand Slam finals, and who has the misfortune to be playing in the same era as the all-time greatness of Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. Neither of these men are failures. They're very, very, very good at tennis, and their only crime is to have fallen short of the milestone of sporting immortality.
If you're a world-class athlete, it's best not to care too much what the public thinks. If you're too dominant, the public can't relate to you and find you boring. If you come second too often, it despairs of you. Your victories must be conspicuously hard-won. There must be graft alongside the grace, bottle alongside the brilliance. We want you to sweat every bit as much as you Swagger Jagger.
If you can master all of that, then we'll truly take you to our hearts. And it can't look too pretty. Tiger Woods's most memorable major victory was not winning the 1997 Masters aged only 21, but the 2008 US Open, with only one good leg. Dame Kelly Holmes is loved not so much because she was a double Olympic gold medallist at 800m and 1500m, but because we saw her strive for years, and, in those final races, for every last inch of her success.
When athletes crumple to defeat in such public spheres, they may lose titles, but they win our affection. That's why, when Rory McIlroy stepped off the 18th green at Congressional, he was not just the 2011 US Open Champion. He was something vastly more: he was our champion.
Musa Okwonga is author of 'A Cultured Left Foot' and 'Will You Manage?'