After observing Pakistan lose spectacularly to Sri Lanka from a position of strength in the last two one-day games between the two teams, the first thought that came to my mind about the Pakistan team is: chokers. But how exactly do we define “choking”? In this post, we give a mathematical definition of choking and then analyze which teams have been the biggest chokers in one-day matches in the past three years.
Consider the first of the above two mentioned matches. In the second innings, after 40 overs, Pakistan was comfortably ahead with a win probability 0.684. Then came the hat-trick by Perera, and by the time the 45th over ended, Pakistan had bitten the dust. In a span of five overs, the win probability of Pakistan plummeted from 0.684 to 0. Similarly, in the second match match, the win probability of Pakistan plunged from 0.800 to 0 in a space of 30 deliveries.
So the mathematical definition that we give for choking is: The losing team had a win probability of more than 0.5 five overs before the end of the match. The difference of 0.5 in win probability implies that the team was comfortably in a winning positions five overs earlier, but somehow managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. In 2012, apart from these two instances, there are four more examples where a team “choked”:
- Pakistan (yet again!) choking against England
- Bangladesh choking against Pakistan
- India choking against Bangladesh
- West Indies choking against Australia
The following table shows the number of times the teams choked in one-day matches in each calender year 2009-2012:
| Team | 2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pakistan | 3 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 6 |
| Bangladesh | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 5 |
| England | 0 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 5 |
| South Africa | 0 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 5 |
| West Indies | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 5 |
| Australia | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| Netherlands | 0 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 3 |
| Kenya | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 3 |
| India | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| Sri Lanka | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| New Zealand | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| Ireland | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 |
| Zimbabwe | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
Usually, the tag of chokers is given to South Africa because of their penchant for losing in a really lame fashion in big stage tournaments. However, 2009 onwards, the biggest chokers have been Pakistan, who have achieved this feat a total of 6 times. What more, the Pakistan team really has a propensity of playing it close: they have been on the winning or losing side of choking affairs a staggering 13 times. South Africa keeps up with its reputation of being the chokers in this analysis, coming a close second with a total of 5 choking instances. On the other hand, India, Sri Lanka and New Zealand have generally played it safe and choked just 2 times each in the past 3 years.