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 was well judged in the context of the prior situation, and in fact it often isn’t, because the phrase gets used most when a high risk shot turns out to be successful. As far as the prior situation was concerned, there was a better play!
Well that is my observation. I place before you the same challenge as before. Suppose that “backing oneself to succeed” really does mean something good, and suppose I claim I am better at it than say Andy Murray. Tell me what it is that you are going to measure about our matches that will decide the issue.
While I’m on the subject of inane commentary, here is some more. A football striker receives a pass on the edge of the box, hits it first time and scores. “He was never going to miss that”, comes the commentary. What on earth does it mean? Strikers miss all the time. Most of their attempts are misses. In what way was that effort more inevitably successful that the previous five that failed? Or is the commentary suggesting a different quality of intent by the striker? Were they not trying as hard before? Enlighten me.
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 was well judged in the context of the prior situation, and in fact it often isn’t, because the phrase gets used most when a high risk shot turns out to be successful. As far as the prior situation was concerned, there was a better play!Well that is my observation. I place before you the same challenge as before. Suppose that “backing oneself to succeed” really does mean something good, and suppose I claim I am better at it than say Andy Murray. Tell me what it is that you are going to measure about our matches that will decide the issue.
While I’m on the subject of inane commentary, here is some more. A football striker receives a pass on the edge of the box, hits it first time and scores. “He was never going to miss that”, comes the commentary. What on earth does it mean? Strikers miss all the time. Most of their attempts are misses. In what way was that effort more inevitably successful that the previous five that failed? Or is the commentary suggesting a different quality of intent by the striker? Were they not trying as hard before? Enlighten me.