Making Sense of the David Warner Situation

Was Warner dropped because he was performing poorly or because the coaches are clueless?

David Warner must have been a horrible captain, so horrible that his past exploits as the Sunrisers Hyderabad captain could not save him now. He was not just demoted from captaincy, he was also relegated to 12th man duties and watch from the sidelines as his team suffered another comprehensive defeat at the the hands of Rajasthan Royals.

I will not discuss that defeat, I think everyone could see it coming. Things just don't look good in that Sunrisers dugout, and that is what makes Warner's demotion and sacking even more interesting. It's a big move on the part of the Sunrisers coaching staff, but was it informed by any data or logic?

No.

It was a Hail Mary, and that is what makes it worth discussing. (If anyone needs help, a Hail Mary is a speculative American Football throw - a very long throw forward - made in desperation, but has a very small chance of success.)

I can almost understand relieving Warner of captaincy, maybe they are looking for a different feel of the match on the field, but, it has to be noted though, if a team is in a bad place, replacing the captain midway through the season is not very helpful. It's like picking a new international captain in the middle of an international series or tour because the team is not performing well. It does not improve culture and has the potential to set the team back, instead of driving it forward. With this move they seem to be insinuating that Warner was the problem after all. But that's a topic for another day.

I mean, dropping him from the starting 11 is extreme. Warner scored 22% of Sunrisers' scores in the six matches that he played in, that's a lot. He has had a bad season, has definitely not been performing at his best with his strike rate of around 110%. But he has no been the problem of the team not winning.

You don't drop your elite batter after two single-digit scores, two scores in the 30s and two fifties in six games. His low strike rate suggests that he is laboring in a struggling team. What you do is give him reinforcements and hope he gets his confidence to strike rate up again. Unless, of course, if Warner was such a terrible team member that he single-handedly brought the team down.

But, Warner's demotion and subsequent dropping from the squad is something that we have seen before, but in a different form.

Think of football goalkeepers. Years ago, a group of researchers conducted a statistical analysis of hundreds of penalty kicks in top soccer leagues worldwide. A penalty kick is taken from just 12 yards away (about 11 meters), and often the ball is traveling at speeds that are closer to 100 mph. There isn’t a lot of reaction time. A goalkeeper can’t really wait for the penalty taker to kick before they decide which way to go.

More often than not, the goalkeeper has little choice but to guess which way to jump before the ball is struck and hope to get lucky. And even when he or she does guess correctly, a save is not the guaranteed result. According to the data collected during the study, goalkeepers stopped only 14.7 percent of penalties taken.

So, if there is little hope or success, why do they bother diving in the first place?

They do so for the same reason that a parent would blow on a child’s wound or hurt arm, when the child is crying. They do it for the same reason why we go to check on things that we cannot do anything to make the situation better. The same reason why some coaches call for a time-out when their team is trailing and have no hope of catching up. The same reason why administrators are more likely to fire coaches: action bias.

Psychologists say that when we are faced with a problem, but are stuck and unsure, we choose to do something rather than sit back and do nothing. Even when that something is not helpful... or even when the action we take sets us back by a couple of steps. Not doing anything, standing by, feels no different to giving up. So to show that we have not given up, we act.

So, the football goalkeepers, they dive so that they are seen to be doing something to stop the shot on goal. Just standing there would make it seem as if they do not care. The coaching staff at Sunrisers have done what goalies do, they are acting for the sake of acting. They don't know what their problem is, but they have to do something.

They have tried everything, well they have shuffled the team so much so far - 21 players in six games. That is a ridiculously high number of players, even when you consider injuries and the handful of players that have left the IPL. But nothing has helped. 5 losses and a solitary win is a lot.

They needed to do something, something that shows that they are still trying to find an answer to the team's indifferent performances. So they pulled the biggest move they could: dropped their most valued player in a long time.

It was a Hail Mary, and like other Hail Marys, they don't always work.

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