Loss is not always 'choking'

It's easy to dismiss the Proteas' semifinal defeat to India as another choke. It's tempting though, given the statistic that we have now failed to win a knockout match in 14 years.

But it's also wrong. Failing to win big matches is not necessarily choking, and choking is not a synonym for losing. There's no doubt that the Proteas are historical tournament under-performers, and this must be addressed. But this may only be possible if we can discard a label that may actually be responsible for holding our own team back.

Technically, choking is over-thinking a skill to the point where what should be implicit becomes explicit. Expert skill execution requires very little thought - it is an automatic process, where thought is directed towards tactics and strategy rather than the mechanical execution of the skill.

For instance, Novak Djokovic is no longer worried about his feet or wrist position when he lines up a cross-court winner. He once was, perhaps at the age of twelve, but having mastered the skill, it has become automatic, unconscious. Choking is the reversal of that mastery. It undoes expert performance because pressure forces too much thought, which interferes with execution.

This triggers a slide into relative incompetence, because the natural response is more thought, and more tension, greater clumsiness and even more errors.

Some famous examples of this include Greg Norman's collapse at the 1996 Masters, in which a six-shot advantage became a five-shot deficit in the final round.

In 1993, Jana Novotna lost a 4-1, 40-30 lead in Wimbledon's final set against Steffi Graf. A double-fault triggered her reversal from expert to amateur, and she lost the next five games in a flurry of errors and double faults to go down 6-4 before crying inconsolably on the Duchess of Kent's shoulder (to her credit, she conquered her demons to win Wimbledon in 1998).

Many point to the infamous semi-final run-out of Allan Donald in the 1999 World Cup as the prime example of SA cricket's choking. I'd suggest it was the exact opposite - panic, the definition of which always includes mention of unthinking behaviour, and is thus the polar opposite of a choke. That was a moment in which, with four balls to go and one run required, the ability to step away from the pressure and think more may have prevented the disastrous outcome.

Unfortunately, the choking label was applied and has stuck. The problem is threefold. First, it forces players to constantly confront the unfair label. The player walks onto the field thinking about not choking, which means they're doing exactly what would have caused it to begin with.

Second, when we create a perception that we only ever lose because we choke, it discredits opposition performances. This leads to 'blindness' that prevents learning. After all, why seek improvement and innovation when all you have to do is stop choking? There is much to learn from better teams.

And third, the unintended consequence is the creation of an altogether new problem, which I suspect is a far more likely explanation for our repeated cricket failures. It is called stereotype threat and is defined, academically, as being at risk of conforming to a negative stereotype about one's social group.

Stereotypes constrain people to behave in a certain way. For example, studies show that women or black populations underperform in maths tasks if they're first told that men or white populations are superior at maths. In tests of athleticism, the opposite is true - white athletes underperform if they're first led to believe they're inferior. Without such reminders, there is no difference in performance, and it doesn't matter if the stereotype is true or not, but rather how a label is perceived.

Now, consider the stereotype of the South African cricketer. You have to win, or you'll be labelled a choker, regardless of the context. The normal response to knowing that others believe you cannot perform in knockout tournaments is to underperform in knockout tournaments. A perfect self-fulfilling prophecy. The sooner it is discarded, the sooner we can turn around the 14-year fall.