UNDER PRESSURE

Why do athletes choke? A new book examines the Proteas’ devastating 1999 Cricket World Cup run-out and other major sporting embarrassments to find out what ordinary people can learn from elite sports stars about conquering performance anxiety

SCOTT Boswell stood at the start of his bowling runup, immersed in his own very public hell. It was the final of the Cheltenham and Gloucester Trophy in 2001 at Lord’s in London, which should have been the highlight of his cricket career. Instead, he found himself unable to do what up until then had felt like second nature.

“I became so anxious I froze. I couldn’t let go,” he recalls.

For Boswell (then 26), a fast bowler for English county cricket outfit Leicestershire, it felt like the over would “absolutely never end”. He couldn’t believe what was happening to him.

“How can I not be able to run up and bowl – something that I’ve done for so many years without even thinking about it? How can that happen? What’s going on in my brain to stop me doing that, and to make me feel physically sick and anxious and that I can’t do something that I’ve just done so naturally?”

An over in cricket comprises six balls – that is, six balls that are not considered a no-ball or wide. There are normally only a handful of no-balls in an innings. But Boswell’s second over in the final against Somerset lasted 14 balls as he repeatedly sprayed the ball too wide of the crease on either side. A YouTube video of the over, entitled The Worst Over Ever? has been watched more than 1,6 million times.

As his second over became more farcical – six of his first eight balls were wides – Boswell recalled the crowd getting “louder and louder”. To try to make the ordeal stop, he rushed, taking less and less time before each ball.