Aniseed Balls

Some seven years ago I asked for an explanation of the expression used by tennis commentators, “ making the opponent play one more shot ”, and set a challenge to explain how we might measure the idea. As predicted, no one met that challenge, though someone did note ironically that making an opponent play one more shot isn’t as good as making them play no more shots. That particular idiotic expression isn’t used much any more – commentators are on to a different idiotic expression: “backing oneself to succeed”. Occasionally this is used as a tired metaphor for being very confident, but my complaint concerns its use in tennis and especially cricket to describe what a player has just done on court or at the wicket. It is used approvingly in an attempt to explain and justify a play resulting in a winning shot or a boundary. But as with the other aforementioned idiom, it explains nothing. All we have is hindsight: it worked on that occasion. There is no attempt to assess whether the play