Cricket and Cognitive Biases

The compilation of an all-time XI of Indian cricket reveals some of the same cognitive biases that blur our assessments of recent history.

Cricinfo—that venerable authority on all things cricket—is compiling an all-time XI for India, having already performed similar exercises for seven other Test nations. Comparing athletes across eras is always tricky, but based upon the other lists of all-time greats, it seems that the criteria for selection is  based upon some combination of the following:

Players’ performance in Test matches.  Ajay Sharma, who played but one Test, probably does not deserve to be considered for his First Class batting average of 67.46, his off-field activities notwithstanding.How players compared with their contemporaries the world over. For example, the 2000s was an era of bloated batting averages; the 1990s were lean years for batsmen. It’s more than just a strict statistical comparison.How important players were to achieving important results for their sides. Did players save their team from defeat, or play crucial roles in famous wins?

Unfortunately, it looks as if sentimentality is set to obfuscate what should be a fairly objective activity. Take, for example, the short-list for openers, which consists of Sunil Gavaskar, Virender Sehwag, Vijay Merchant and Navjot Singh Sidhu. All four have the credentials, but I was disappointed that the jury failed to recognize current Indian opener Gautam Gambhir. Gambhir has a batting average of almost 53, higher than Gavaskar’s (51), Merchant’s (48) and Sidhu’s (42), and just below Sehwag’s (54). One argument against him would be that, as a relative newcomer, he has not played enough matches (32 so far). Yet Merchant played in only 10 Tests and Sidhu not many more (51). In fact, this further strengthens Gambhir’s case: despite fewer Tests, he has already scored as many centuries as Sidhu (9), not to mention many more than Merchant (3). The argument can also be made that Gambhir’s figures are exaggerated by batting-friendly conditions and weak opposition. Fair enough. Yet two of his centuries came in wins over quality opponents (Australia and Sri Lanka). Merchant, while no doubt a great player, never played for a winning Test side. Compared to his peers, Gambhir was voted the best Test player at the 2009 ICC awards. Had such awards been around during their careers, it is unlikely that Merchant or Sidhu would have ever been in the reckoning for them, based on their Test performances alone (Merchant did indeed have a stellar First Class record). I still think that India’s two best openers have been Gavaskar and Sehwag, which may make this debate irrelevant, but there appears to be no objective basis for Gambhir’s exclusion from the short-list.

I bring this up for what it tells us about our attitudes towards recent history and the various cognitive biases that come into play when considering important policy debates.

On the one hand, a set of logical processes bias us in favor of what we have experienced firsthand, a trait that has long been documented in psychological literature. Thus, many of us are more likely to appreciate contemporary achievements, such as those of Sachin Tendulkar, Tiger Woods or Roger Federer over Don Bradman, Jack Nicklaus or Rod Laver. Similarly, the big ideological breakthroughs of recent memory overshadow those of earlier times. We may have all had the experience of reading an older work of scholarship, only to be struck by how applicable it is to a current situation; it is often quite humbling to realise that complex ideas have already been so well thought through by thinkers of an earlier era, many of whom are now nearly forgotten. In the security realm, the disproportionate emphasis placed on Indian sacrifices during the Kargil War (India’s first televised conflict) when some 2-3 times the number were killed in 1947-48, 1971 and 1987-1990 in Sri Lanka would be one noteworthy example, one that is by no means meant to diminish the achievements of Indian forces in 1999.

By contrast, most of us fall victim to a number of cognitive biases that make us favour the more distant past over the present. Consequently, the achievements of Merchant, whom none of the Cricinfo jury saw play, take on a mythic aura and his failures get overlooked. By contrast, all of Gambhir’s failings, technical or otherwise, are both seen and recalled. While demonstrably talented and successful, he remains a mere mortal.

Such thinking is particularly applicable to evaluations of politics and policy. For example, there has recently been a rediscovery of sorts of Indian internationalism in the early years after independence, which—according to most such narratives—gradually gave way to a closing off of the country to the outside world, particularly during the Indira Gandhi years. Supporters of this view point to India’s mediation before and during the Korean War and the leading role that Nehru took in the early years of the Non-Aligned Movement, as among the examples of past Indian activism on the global stage.

But these ought to be offset by other considerations: the much smaller size of India’s foreign policy infrastructure (for example, India lacked an external intelligence bureau, and had only three IB officers posted abroad in its early years), the lack of resources at home to leverage to its advantage, and the immensity of security challenges nearer at hand. Neutral mediation and third world multilateralism are both the domains of countries with little or no stake in major issues (take present-day Finland, for example). Indian activities in the first two decades after independence, successful or not, take on that same rosy aura that Vijay Merchant’s batting does, placing current efforts in a comparatively unfavourable light. Such biases should not come in the way of  objective appraisals of achievements past and present.

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