Did Hyman Minsky find the secret behind financial crashes?

American economist Hyman Minsky, who died in 1996, grew up during the Great Depression, an event which shaped his views and set him on a crusade to explain how it happened and how a repeat could be prevented, writes Duncan Weldon.

Minsky spent his life on the margins of economics but his ideas suddenly gained currency with the 2007-08 financial crisis. To many, it seemed to offer one of the most plausible accounts of why it had happened.

His long out-of-print books were suddenly in high demand with copies changing hands for hundreds of dollars - not bad for densely written tomes with titles like Stabilizing an Unstable Economy.

Senior central bankers including current US Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen and the Bank of England's Mervyn King began quoting his insights. Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman named a high profile talk about the financial crisis The Night They Re-read Minsky.

Here are five of his ideas.

Stability is destabilising

Minsky's main idea is so simple that it could fit on a T-shirt, with just three words: "Stability is destabilising."

Most macroeconomists work with what they call "equilibrium models" - the idea is that a modern market economy is fundamentally stable. That is not to say nothing ever changes but it grows in a steady way.

To generate an economic crisis or a sudden boom some sort of external shock has to occur - whether that be a rise in oil prices, a war or the invention of the internet.

Minsky disagreed. He thought that the system itself could generate shocks through its own internal dynamics. He believed that during periods of economic stability, banks, firms and other economic agents become complacent.

They assume that the good times will keep on going and begin to take ever greater risks in pursuit of profit. So the seeds of the next crisis are sown in the good time.

Three stages of debt

Minsky had a theory, the "financial instability hypothesis", arguing that lending goes through three distinct stages. He dubbed these the Hedge, the Speculative and the Ponzi stages, after financial fraudster Charles Ponzi.

In the first stage, soon after a crisis, banks and borrowers are cautious. Loans are made in modest amounts and the borrower can afford to repay both the initial principal and the interest.

As confidence rises banks begin to make loans in which the borrower can only afford to pay the interest. Usually this loan is against an asset which is rising in value. Finally, when the previous crisis is a distant memory, we reach the final stage - Ponzi finance. At this point banks make loans to firms and households that can afford to pay neither the interest nor the principal. Again this is underpinned by a belief that asset prices will rise.

The easiest way to understand is to think of a typical mortgage. Hedge finance means a normal capital repayment loan, speculative finance is more akin to an interest-only loan and then Ponzi finance is something beyond even this. It is like getting a mortgage, making no payments at all for a few years and then hoping the value of the house has gone up enough that its sale can cover the initial loan and all the missed payments. You can see that the model is a pretty good description of the kind of lending that led to the financial crisis.

Minsky moments

The "Minsky moment", a term coined by later economists, is the moment when the whole house of cards falls down. Ponzi finance is underpinned by rising asset prices and when asset prices eventually start to fall then borrowers and banks realise there is debt in the system that can never be paid off. People rush to sell assets causing an even larger fall in prices.

It is like the moment that a cartoon character runs off a cliff. They keep on running for a while, still believing they're on solid ground. But then there's a moment of sudden realisation - the Minsky moment - when they look down and see nothing but thin air. Then they plummet to the ground, and that's the crisis and crash of 2008.

Finance matters

Until fairly recently, most macroeconomists were not very interested in the finer details of the banking and financial system. They saw it as just an intermediary which moved money from savers to borrowers.

This is rather like the way most people are not very interested in the finer details of plumbing when they're having a shower. As long as the pipes are working and the water is flowing there is no need to understand the detailed workings.

To Minsky, banks were not just pipes but more like a pump - not just simple intermediaries moving money through the system but profit-making institutions, with an incentive to increase lending. This is part of the mechanism that makes economies unstable.

Preferring words to maths and models

Since World War Two, mainstream economics has become increasingly mathematical, based on formal models of how the economy works.

To model things you need to make assumptions, and critics of mainstream economics argue that as the models and maths became more and more complex, the assumptions underpinning them became more and more divorced from reality. The models became an end in themselves.

Although he trained in mathematics, Minsky preferred what economists call a narrative approach - he was about ideas expressed in words. Many of the greats from Adam Smith to John Maynard Keynes to Friedrich Hayek worked like this.

While maths is more precise, words might allow you to express and engage with complex ideas that are tricky to model - things like uncertainty, irrationality, and exuberance. Minsky's fans say this contributed to a view of the economy that was far more "realistic" than that of mainstream economics.

Why the BCCI won't be swayed by Richardson's DRS claims

The ICC's CEO hopes to get India on board and backing the review system, but that doesn't look likely to happen

Martin Crowe in Cricinfo

March 24, 2014

 

How can there be a zone of certainty for something that never happened? © BCCI

David Richardson, the CEO of the ICC, runs world cricket from an executive position. He also set up and designed the one and only DRS, which is sometimes nicknamed the David Richardson System.

The roots of this experiment with technology date back to 2007, when Richardson was the ICC's general manager. Following the awful Monkeygate controversy in Sydney in 2008, when umpiring howlers dominated a nasty contest between Australia and India, Richardson fast-tracked the DRS to avoid any further outcry for technology to help the umpires in the middle. It made sense; umpiring mistakes followed by copious replays, enabled by technology, of those mistakes, were killing the spirit of the game. That nasty series was the watershed. Enough was enough.

In mid-2009, the launch of Richardson's system was hastily arranged in time for the Sri Lanka v India series. For some reason they chose not to use the highly credible Hawk-Eye technology and instead went with a rookie rival, Animated Research Limited, a New Zealand-based operation. The result was a disaster. The details are well documented. The upshot was that India, rightly, condemned the predictive path used, and the conditions of the player challenge.

Since that ill-fated start in Sri Lanka, the DRS has spluttered along, accompanied by a mixture of embarrassment and the inevitable spin that all is well. Apparently, according to Richardson himself, the percentage of correct decisions has risen, but that is going by the rules of the system itself, which, with its "zones of certainty" concept, offers flawed predictions. Hardly an accurate measure for basing statistics on. Overall, the system has lacked credibility, and the BCCI has been the only one to consistently point this out.

Last week, however Richardson seemed to pre-empt a BCCI about-turn, based on his convincing former India captain Anil Kumble, who is on the ICC's technical committee, and also the upcoming appointment of N Srinivasan as ICC chairman. Kumble, who was critical of the DRS back when it first appeared is now seen as an easy pushover, ensuring that Richardson finally gets full global approval for the system.

Kumble is an independent, astute, balanced, outstanding man and player, well respected in the world game. I had the privilege of working with him in 2008, in the first IPL, and over the next few years on the MCC World Committee. Without question, he will be true to his beliefs. As for Srinivasan, nothing seems to faze him, and his opposition to the system has been unyielding.

Two things stand out. Firstly, it is inconceivable that Kumble, or the BCCI, will buckle. Secondly, the system is so flawed that the only long-term solution is to bin the dog's breakfast it is, and start from scratch.

The flaws have been well debated. The predictive path is never going to be bulletproof, and it often shows trajectories significantly different to those that would have come to pass. After all, the system is operated by humans.

The player-challenge rules are ridiculous, with two gambling chips offered for either side, slowing the game down and continually disrespecting the umpires' ability.

	The player-challenge rules are ridiculous, with two gambling chips offered for either side, slowing the game down and continually disrespecting the umpires' ability

Take a look at an imaginary scenario, of the sort often seen in Tests now (although not necessarily off consecutive balls as described below).

A batsman is hit on the pad and is given out. Knowing it's a 50-50 call, that he is a key batsman, and that his team has two unsuccessful challenges, he decides to review. The ball-tracking predictive path shows the ball clipping the leg stump by a whisker, so with the benefit going to the umpire, and not the batsman, the lbw is upheld. The batsman walks off convinced there was doubt about might have happened. He's convinced if the DRS wasn't in use, he would have been given the benefit of doubt, so he rues the system. The umpire himself learns that it only just clipped the top of the leg stump. He is relieved, yet also perhaps startled at how close it was, and put in two minds, remembering that in the pre-DRS days, it was the batsman who usually got the benefit of any doubt.

With the next ball, the new batsman receives the same delivery. He is hit on the pads, and this time, after much rumination, is given not out by the same umpire. The fielding captain, knowing it's 50-50 and that he has two unsuccessful challenges left, decides to review. The predictive path shows the ball just clipping the leg stump, not inside the "zone of certainty", so the review is turned down, the batsman and the umpire getting the benefit, the fielding side losing a challenge. The batsman previously given out is watching in the dressing room as he undoes his pads. He's fuming.

Next ball, there is another shout for lbw. Again, it looks similar to the one before, so the umpire gives it not out. The fielding captain, knowing he has one unsuccessful challenge left, decides that again it's worth the gamble to remove this key new batsman, so calls for another review. The predictive path shows the ball just hitting leg stump, but a little closer to the middle of the stump. In fact, when it's zoomed in really close, it has hit the leg stump only a fraction inside where the previous ball struck. But as it is hitting the centre line of the stump, and is therefore inside the "zone of certainty", the third umpire must tell the umpire in the middle to reverse his decision and give the batsman out. The umpire in the middle crosses his arms and raises his finger. The batsman and umpire have both been denied the benefit, while the fielding captain is cock-a-hoop because his gamble has paid off. On top of that, he keeps his one remaining challenge alive.

In three balls you have a snapshot of the ridiculous system the ICC has hung its hat on. Zone of certainty? For something that never happened, was simply predicted? No wonder so many players think it is flawed - though they rarely say it out loud in case of retribution. Also, it is little wonder the fans think it's madness, because it's confusing, complex and often contradictory.

The DRS as it is needs to be scrapped. Instead, why not sit down with everyone's interest and opinion tabled and we might see the following, or something similar.

One unsuccessful challenge per team per innings. The clear direction to all players will then be that the only time the system should be used is when an embarrassing mistake has been made that should be overturned for everyone's sake. In other words, the players are protecting the umpire. The system is not for personal or team tactical use. That would be regarded as going against the spirit of the game and the umpires.

This way, the game keeps moving, whereas if the third umpire was given the exclusive role of reviewing, he would be doing it every time, including for any 50-50 calls, for fear of been hauled up and exposed for not getting every single decision right. This would only slow the game down more, and cricket is already an incredibly slow sport. In truth, all sports can't ensure all decisions are accurate; that is part of their beauty. What is important is to remove embarrassment, to protect the umpire and the player on the wrong end of such a howler.

No predictive path is necessary. The trajectory that is forecast never came to pass in reality. It is subjective to the umpire and his expertise, and is part of cricket. To remove the howler, Hot Spot and real-time Snicko, along with super slo-mo replays can do the job.

The technology that should be used is the actual path and the virtual mat. That is accurate to a few millimetres and is sufficient to assist the umpires with line calls regarding balls pitching outside leg or hitting outside off, just as it does for line calls for stumpings and run-outs, and as in tennis.

Alas, Richardson is incredibly stubborn. There isn't a chance in hell he will back off his own creation, and hence the ongoing stalemate. He is hoping to sway Kumble, Srinivasan, and the BCCI, with spin. One would imagine that Kumble knows bad spin from good more than anyone. Richardson is up against a resolute, enduring opponent. He, for one, has a shelf life, and the BCCI, which isn't going anywhere, won't budge an inch. The stalemate will continue.

To bat right, get your mind right

Footwork may be crucial to the batsman's art, but a mind rooted in the present moment is just as great a weapon

Martin Crowe in Cricinfo

March 20, 2014

Don Bradman: maintained a clear mind on his way to a mind-boggling batting average © Getty Images

Mind and body are undoubtedly connected, go hand in hand. I looked at the importance of footwork in batting last week; that leaves the more intangible, more controversial, mindwork to look at.

Of all the sports I have attempted to play - tennis, golf, rugby, soccer, and many others - the greatest challenge of all, I believe, is that of batting in cricket, where one ball can be enough to end the contest. One lousy ball.

It is this mental challenge of dealing with one ball at a time, knowing one mistake and it's over, that is the focus of this piece.

----Also by Martin Crowe

It's all down to the feet - The cornerstone of batting technique is foot position and movement

-----

When it comes to batting, which is based on reacting to the release of a ball by a bowler, the mind is on full alert. At the moment the ball is released, the eyes start feeding the brain, which then directs the body to respond, all in a split second.

Succeeding at Test cricket over a reasonable period is not a thing you can fluke. Realistically, at some stage in a career, the batting mind-body challenge will get you. It can play with your thinking, and mess with your responses, resulting in a failure to move properly causing the runs to dry up.

I will assess the mindsets of two batsmen I have studied over time - Don Bradman and Sachin Tendulkar, two positive examples - and my own.

Bradman had the greatest record and legacy of all batsmen. His footwork became legendary and influential for generations to come, but it was surely his mind and his ability to clear his thoughts away that was his greatest attribute. Bradman, there is no doubt, became a misunderstood human being, especially by team-mates who stood shoulder to shoulder with him. They couldn't work out the mechanics of his mind, nor his beliefs and ability to perform beyond the norm, and some of them became envious of his record-breaking run-making.

Bradman was brought up in rural New South Wales, where much of his upbringing was spent playing out by the back of the house, on his own, hitting a golf ball against a water tank with a single stump. When he joined the higher ranks at a young age, he took with him a single-mindedness and a natural naivete. As he began to taste more worldly experiences on his travels, his mind stayed true to his dreams. He only wanted to bat. And the only way he knew how to do that was to trust his conditioning, his beliefs and his thoughts. He saw the ball and moved accordingly.

Bradman was a private, single-minded man. He didn't drink, smoke, or really socialise much during his playing days, unlike those he played with. He was different and he quickly became alienated due to his unexampled existence.

In a recent address at Lord's, his son John shared writings from his father's diary, in particular to do with the first few weeks of the 1930 England tour, when Bradman played outside Australia for the first time. After a long boat trip, during which he often lay sick in his bed, he stepped out on to the Nursery at Lord's to prepare for the long five-month tour.

Bradman had only a couple of nets to acclimatise before walking out to bat in Worcester for the opening match. In fresh, green, bowler-friendly conditions, he scored 236 in under five hours. For a 21-year-old it was an extraordinary innings, given it was his first outside of his homeland. It was a clear precursor to the mesmeric run of form to come throughout that unprecedented summer. In essence, no matter what the conditions, his thinking was sharp and focused; he saw the ball, reacted and moved accordingly, and that fearless mindset never left him. For one with no experience whatsoever in foreign conditions, it was a breathtaking performance.

Despite the accolades and the expectation that grew from innings to innings, Bradman remained grounded and resilient. He never deviated from the original day-to-day thinking of his upbringing. He was not tempted to break out and let his hair down, on or off the field; instead, much to the annoyance of some of his more outgoing team-mates, he kept his eye on the ball. No innings meant more than the one he was about to play, no matter the size of the last score he had made. Unemotionally he moved from one match to the next with a consistent hunger to express his art. It was unrivalled thinking.

Bradman prepared for matches by attending musical shows. His favourite to watch was opera singer Dame Nellie Melba. The night before his monumental 254 in the second Test on that tour, at Lord's, in his words the greatest innings of his life, he was inspired by Dame Nellie's performance. For Don, it appeared music and cricket went together; the footwork his movement to the beat. He danced at the crease like no other, because in his mind he heard the sound of the moment. It steadied him mentally for the body to exert wondrous movement.

	Fear of getting out is really an illusion, a negative thought with feeling added to it, about past failures and / or future ones. It needn't be there at all. The fact is, you will get out, so there is no need to fear it

Bradman had the advantage of only playing in two countries throughout his Test career, England and Australia. It meant he never had the mental and physical burden of travelling and coping, especially with problems to do with health, in more foreign lands. His overall average would have dropped perhaps a little, had he played in more places, but probably not by much. The point is that he stuck to his beliefs, he maintained a clear mind, and even at the age of 40 his mental aptitude was astonishing as it adjusted to the natural slowing down of a body and an immune system that had been tested enough. Only Bodyline in 1932-33 affected his psyche somewhat, as it actually threatened life and limb. Without question, Bradman had the greatest mind of them all.

Next to him on that scale would be Tendulkar. To endure 24 years, in all parts of the globe, against all measure of bowlers, under epic expectations, with the distraction of three different formats, required a mind that simply had to be strong and resilient to succeed. He never buckled for any period. Sure, he had rare moments of despair, but the quickness with which he bounced back with a clear mind, fleet of foot, to notch another century, was his hallmark.

Tendulkar, from the age of 16, spent his first 21 Tests playing away from home, bar one. He learnt quickly to absorb and adjust, and cement a mindset that would serve him unwaveringly for a staggeringly long time.

Expectation gone wrong is a mind-killer. The adoration he received on a daily basis would have worn him down at times, yet he always responded with a smile, a graciousness, a humility pure and natural. His mind, from an early age, was fuelled with love for the game, love for his father's wisdom and advice, and his thoughts flowed with positivity and assuredness. If you wondered how he played so calmly, so fluently and so straight, given the weight of expectation, it was because his mind never strayed from the humility he breathed, and the mindfulness, that acute awareness, of where his genius came from. Tendulkar was a centred soul, spiritually aligned, and he breathed a tranquility and stillness, a trait displayed by the wise sages.

From my own perspective, my mind was often filled with thoughts, coupled with underdeveloped emotions. It wasn't a great mix in which to take on the art of batting at the top level. My footwork was sure and a priority, yet I quickly realised that footwork and mindwork go hand in glove. I needed some mental crutches and so I sought out the new phenomenon of sports psychology to deal with an overflow of desultory musing.

I learnt techniques of visualisation, of playing the future out in the mind first, using pictures. I learnt concentration - turning on and off to conserve energy, and encouraging a fierce focus for each ball for five-second periods. I tried removing negatives with Bruce Lee tips, imagined screwing an imaginary piece of paper up with my hand, tried to stay in the now by activating one of the five senses in between balls.

Most of all, I learnt to repeat affirmations one after the other ("Head still, head still, watch the ball, watch the ball"), slowly and deliberately, to block out any unforeseen random thought ("What if I get out?") that might jump into my head and trip me up again. Yet using these techniques was akin to a lost man trying to find his way to safety.

I learnt to remove emotion, by forcing my body language so strongly as to bluff the opposition that I was "on" on any given day, in the zone. Faking it until I made it helped overcome confidence lapses. I sought help from those who could help me calm down. I never engaged in gamesmanship, in sledging.

Overall, the mindwork I did proved exhausting - having to disguise a contaminated flow of thoughts. Not surprisingly, the lack of natural positive thinking, of authenticity, got me in the end. Ten years of "performed" mind control was my limit.

The key, from what I have learnt, from what I now believe, is that no matter your experiences and circumstances, your reality is in the present moment - what you are living in the feeling of your thinking in the present moment. That's your truest reality. It is not the memory of what went before, or the concern of what may come in the future, that is real. In batting, it is the clear-minded thinking of watching and moving to the present ball being bowled that is real.

I realise also that visualisation worked only when I was truly in the moment of seeing images of me thinking and batting positively. It prepared me for the event to come. When it came together, like at Lord's in 1994, when I was well prepared from visualising positively, then I easily settled into thinking and batting positively in the present. It worked, but it couldn't be sustained.

Fear of getting out is really an illusion, a negative thought with feeling added to it, about past failures and / or future ones. It needn't be there at all. The fact is, you will get out, so there is no need to fear it; simply delay the inevitable for as long as possible.

You can succeed if you clear away everything that's not to do with the present moment, the next ball, if you remove old baggage or concern about what might happen in time. Just think about watching the ball leave the bowler's hand. That's it.

Simplicity.

That is what Bradman and Tendulkar did. During their teenage years they developed a resilience about keeping their minds present and consistent. That age is a key time of one's thought development. They mastered the moments. They didn't get confused. They went from one ball to the other, one match to another, exploring its possibility and expressing their own potential, and that's why they went on and on at such a high level.

Perhaps Mahatma Gandhi says it best. "A man is but the product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes."

Tony Benn knew the rules but would not play the game

His lifelong belief in socialism inspired several generations of socialists and radicals, and infuriated the establishment

• 
• • Gary Younge
  • The Guardian, Friday 14 March 2014 18.05 GMT

Tony Benn: ‘What is the final corruption in politics? Earlier, it was to get into cabinet, before that, to be popular, but later on, the final corruption is this kindly, harmless old gentleman …' Photograph: Nick Rogers/Rex

The conductor was striding through the early train from Paddington to Penzance apologising as we shuddered to a halt just east of the Tamar. "I'm sorry for the delay," he told Tony Benn, sitting opposite me. "There was a lightning strike on the line ahead."

"Lightning strike!" said Benn, assuming industrial action. "What's it about?"

"It's about God, sir," said the guard, referring to the harsh weather of the previous night, and the two men smiled at each other.

That night I stayed in Cornwall. The prospect of spending nine hours on a train in one day was too draining. Benn came straight back, arriving in Paddington around 11pm so he could be up at 6am the next day to drive to Burford to address a Levellers rally. Around the time I was ordering my second round of sandwiches from the buffet car on my way back from Cornwall, he was heading back to London from Burford to speak to a pro-Palestinian demonstration, when his car exploded on the motorway. I was 33; he was 77.

When I next saw him I suggested, in jest, that he slow down, if only to stop me looking bad. He laughed and said he planned to work right up to the end. "The last entry in my diary will be: 'St Thomas's hospital: I'm not feeling very well today'," he said. He even had plans for his gravestone. "I'd like it to say: 'Tony Benn – he encouraged us.'"

The two things that stood out, watching him both from afar from an early age and up close over those few weeks, were his optimism and his persistence. He believed that people were inherently decent and that they could work together make the world a better place – and he was prepared to join them in that work wherever they were.

This alone made him remarkable in late 20th-century British politics. He believed in something. For some this was enough: they were desperate for some ideological authenticity, for someone for whom politics was rooted not merely in a series of calculations about what was possible in any given moment but in a set of principles guiding what was necessary and desirable. Criticisms that he was divisive ring hollow unless the critics address what the divisions in question were, and how the struggle to address them panned out.

Benn stood against Labour's growing moral vacuity and a political class that was losing touch with the people it purported to represent. The escalating economic inequalities, the increasing privatisation of the National Health Service, the Iraq war and the deregulation of the finance industry that led to the economic crisis – all of which proceeded with cross-party support – leave a question mark over the value of the unity on offer. What some refuse to forgive is not so much his divisiveness as his apostasy. He was a class traitor. He would not defend the privilege into which he was born or protect the establishment of which he was a part. It was precisely because he knew the rules that he would not play the game.

He hitched these principles to Labour's wagon from an early age. Its founding mission of representing the interests of the labour movement in parliament was one he held dear. He never left it even when, particularly as he got older, it seemed to leave him. His primary loyalty was not to a party but to the causes of internationalism, solidarity and equality, which together provided the ethical compass for his political engagement. When people told him that they had ripped up their party membership cards in disgust, he would say: "That's all well and good. But what are you doing now?"

With his trademark pipe, mug of tea and cardigans, that could have left him a fossilised figure of a distant ideological era. But, contrary to popular misconceptions, his politics did evolve. He did not grow up in a time when gay rights, defending Muslims against Islamophobia, or even gender equality were central to left discourse. But when they emerged as key issues he had no trouble understanding either their value or their potential. He stood for something more than office and he didn't pander. That was why he was one of the few people to emerge from an Ali G interview with his dignity intact.

Some would regard this as evidence of naivety, bordering on delusion, that went from dangerous to endearing the older and further away from power he got. Having fought so hard in the 60s to renounce his peerage, his struggle in later life was to be elevated to the to the role of "national treasure" – like Dame Judi Dench, only without the title or an Oscar. Those who pilloried him as an extremist became eager to patronise him as eccentric. "He may have talked some blather over the years," Keith Waterhouse once wrote of him in the Daily Mail. "But it was always blather he believed in."

"That's the thing you worry about," said Benn. "What is the final corruption in politics? Earlier, it was to get into cabinet, before that, to be popular, but, later on, the final corruption is this kindly, harmless old gentleman … I'm very aware of that. I take the praise as sceptically as I took the abuse. I asked myself some time ago: what do you do when you're old? You don't whinge, you don't talk all the time about the past, you don't try and manage anything, you try and encourage people."

The devotion that has poured out for him since his passing is not simply nostalgia. The parents of many of those who embraced him in recent times – the occupiers, student activists, anti-globalisation campaigners – were barely even conscious at the height of his left turn. They are not mourning a relic of the past but an advocate for a future they believe is not only possible but necessary.

The trouble for his detractors was that Benn would not go quietly into old age. He didn't just believe in "anything": he believed in something very definite – socialism. He advocated for the weak against the strong, the poor against the rich and labour against capital. He believed that we were more effective as human beings when we worked together collectively than when we worked against each other as individuals. Such principles have long been threatened with extinction in British politics. Benn did a great deal to keep them alive. In the face of media onslaught and political marginalisation, that took courage. And, in so doing, he encouraged us.

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.

Tony Benn was defiantly, stroppily, youthfully socialist to the very end

Mark Steel in The Independent

The older you get, apparently, the more you abandon the daft socialist ideas of your youth to become sensible and conservative. There will never be a greater retort to this miserable myth than the life of Tony Benn.

Because somehow he became more defiantly, inspiringly, stroppily, youthfully socialist every year up to 88. If he’d lasted to 90 he’d have been on the news wearing a green Mohican and getting arrested for chaining himself to a banker.

Even more remarkable is that as he became younger with age, so did his audience. In a time when socialist groups despair at how to attract the under-50s, Benn regularly packed out a tent that held 3,000 people at Glastonbury. Anyone passing by outside who heard the roars and squeals as he appeared must have assumed the Arctic Monkeys were making a surprise appearance, but it was a man in his 80s, clambering on stage with a flask of tea.

Then he’d start with: “I’m pleased to say I’ve decided to give up protesting. Instead of protesting I’m going to take up DEMANDING instead.” And teenagers would shriek and raise their arms above their heads and clap, belly button studs wobbling as he recounted the first time he met Clement Attlee.

He filled theatres as well. In places like Telford, the box office manager would say: “The shows that went fastest this year were Tony Benn and a Led Zeppelin tribute act.” Maybe other politicians will try to copy him, before wondering why tickets aren’t selling well for “An evening with David Blunkett”.

He was introduced to socialism during the Second World War, when it became mainstream to suggest that if the nation could collectively pool its resources to fight, it should be able to do the same to provide health and housing. The introduction of the welfare state, along with the movements that won independence in the colonies, must have confirmed for him that mass movements, combined with parliament, can transform society in favour of the poorest people.

Parliament, he insisted, was the pinnacle of democracy, the triumph of radical thinking that went in a line from the early Christians, through the Levellers in the English Civil War and up to the Labour Party (although he’d have told Jesus, “I don’t think you should turn that water into wine as I’ve seen the damage alcohol can do.”).

These ideas can’t have seemed too controversial until the 1970s, when the response to global economic chaos was to blame the unions, taxes and state ownership of anything, and instead hand unrestrained power to big business and the free market.

But Benn stuck to his principles, so Conservatives called him the “most dangerous man in Britain”. He must have consistently disappointed opponents who portrayed him as a figure of evil, as they tried to convince people: “You can tell he’s trying to wreck the country: he’s got a gently persuasive lilting tone and he’s addicted to tea. He’s obviously worse than Stalin.”

Maybe it was the simplicity of his ideals that made him so endearing. If someone suggested immigration was causing our woes, he’d reply that it was odd how a businessman can move his business overseas, but the workforce shouldn’t be allowed to follow it to stay in work.

 

To anyone who argued that we don’t act collectively any more, he’d recount the day he was on a train that broke down for hours, and “up until then we’d all been individuals on a privatised train, but now we helped each other, lending phones and sharing sandwiches, and by the time it arrived it was a socialist train”.

But despite his reverence for Parliament, in some ways it was once he left it that he became most powerful. With an unfathomable energy he spoke at several events a day. Union meetings, anti-war benefits, campaigns against library closures – he was everywhere. If he was on Tony Blair’s asking rate for speeches he’d have been a billionaire within a month.

It wouldn’t have been surprising to find he was addressing a union conference, then speaking on the Iraq war at a children’s party, before giving a lecture about the peasants’ revolt at a sado-masochists AGM before nipping up to Leicester to appear on Question Time.

I did some filming with him once at seven in the morning, the only time he could do it. I got a taxi to his house, driven by a Pakistani man in a rage about the Iraq war. “Politicians are all crooks,” he kept saying, “The only one I trust is Tony Benn.” “Well,” I said, “strangely, we’re going to his house.” “Tony Benn? House of Tony Benn? We go to house of Tony Benn? Not Tony Benn?” he said.

Tony Benn in 1964 (PA)

So when we arrived I asked Tony Benn: “Would you mind meeting the taxi driver, he’s a huge fan of yours.” Then I went in with the driver who yelped and clasped Benn’s hand, saying “This is such a good day. Oh such a good day. My friends will not believe this.”

And Benn said: “Well I don’t know about that but I’ve got the kettle on if you’d like a cup of tea.”

This seemed to be his life. The more unassuming and down to earth he was, the more he acquired the reputation that narcissists crave.

In later years, when the establishment were unable to damage him or his reputation with their claims of his inherent evil, they labelled him a national sweetheart, and if he’d wanted to, I’m sure he could have presented Countdown and got to the final of Strictly Come Dancing.

But he ignored his new image, almost baffled by the acclaim he drew, and continued to make the case that a world in which the richest 400 have the same wealth as the poorest 2 billion is probably a bit wrong, and could do with putting right. And he did it to the end, in such a way that made anyone listening believe it was possible.

Interviewed a few weeks ago, he was asked how he’d like to be remembered. He said: “With the words ‘he inspired us’.”

Well he’s got no worries there. No worries at all.

10 of the best Tony Benn quotes

 

Tony Benn was known as an eloquent and inspirational speaker. Here are ten of his most memorable quotes, as picked by Guardian readers

• Guardian readers and James Walsh
• theguardian.com, Saturday 15 March 2014 12.39 GMT

Tony Benn attends a rally in Hyde Park, London, during a protest organised by the Trades Union Congress called The March for the Alternative on 26 March 2011. Photograph: Kevin Coombs/Reuters

1) “If we can find the money to kill people, we can find the money to help people.”

Tony Benn was interviewed in Sicko, Michael Moore’s documentary film about the health industry in the US. Explaining the post-war creation of the welfare state, he said the popular mood of the 1945 election was: “If you can have full employment by killing Germans, why can’t we have full employment by building hospitals, building schools?”

2) His “Five questions” for the powerful.

Tony Benn’s final speech to the House of Commons as MP was an appropriately eloquent farewell, in which he talked widely on his view of the role of parliament and the wider question of democracy. As Hansard records, he said: 

In the course of my life I have developed five little democratic questions. If one meets a powerful person--Adolf Hitler, Joe Stalin or Bill Gates--ask them five questions: “What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? And how can we get rid of you?” If you cannot get rid of the people who govern you, you do not live in a democratic system.

3) “Making mistakes is how you learn.”

 I made every mistake in the book, but making mistakes is how you learn. I would be ashamed if I ever said anything I didn’t believe in, to get on personally.

4) “I now want more time to devote to politics and more freedom to do so”

With a typically memorable turn of phrase, Tony Benn signalled the end of his parliamentary career in 1999, when he announced he would not be standing for re-election at the next general election. Asked whether he would be taking his place in the House of Lords, the former Viscount Stansgate - Benn renounced his peerage back in 1963 - replied: “Don’t be silly.”

5) “The House of Lords is the British Outer Mongolia for retired politicians.”

Given the above, this quote is not especially surprising, but worth repeating. Tony Benn was a lifelong campaigner for constitutional reform, and introduced a bill that would have allowed him to renounce his peerage as early as 1955.

6) “I think there are two ways in which people are controlled. First of all frighten people and secondly, demoralise them.”

Another quote from Tony Benn’s interview with Michael Moore in Sicko, in which he highlighted poverty and healthcare inequality as a democratic issue. “The people in debt become hopeless, and the hopeless people don’t vote... an educated, healthy and confident nation is harder to govern,” he said.

7) “Hope is the fuel of progress and fear is the prison in which you put yourself”

Tony Benn thought any meaningful change could only come from below, and felt apathy was openly encouraged by those in positions of power. “The Prime Minister said in 1911, 14 years before I was born, that if women get the vote it will undermine parliamentary democracy. How did apartheid end? How did anything happen?”

8) “We are not just here to manage capitalism but to change society and to define its finer values.”

Blamed by many for contributing to Labour’s lack of electoral success during the 1980s, Tony Benn was a totem for those who rejected the shift to the right widely seen as necessary if the party was to regain power. This shift was eventually completed under Tony Blair, who pushed through the abandonment of clause IV and redefined Labour as a party comfortable with privatisation and free market economics. The quote above indicates why Benn resisted such a move.

9) “There is no moral difference between a stealth bomber and a suicide bomber. Both kill innocent people for political reasons.”

10) “A faith is something you die for, a doctrine is something you kill for. There is all the difference in the world.”

Tony Benn’s calcified view of the US as an imperialist force left him on the margins of mainstream opinion during the cold war, but a voice of reason to many after the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Tony Benn puffs on his pipe as he listens to speeches during the second day of the 66th annual Labour Party Conference, in Scarborough, England. Photograph: Laurence Harris/AP