Clutch player

The diverse literature on the choker

The converse of the choker: the clutch player: the athlete who can rise to the occasion, and, when the chips are down and all hope apparently lost, overcome insuperable odds to defeat the monster.

This is not someone who just stays ice cool and executes skills flawlessly under extreme pressure: it is going beyond that, and tapping something heroic, almost mythical.

This may even be a mythical archetype that doesn’t exist, or at least doesn’t exist without extreme post-fact evidence selection, and it may not necessarily be a sporting or a combat thing, as such, but as sport is the most common theatre where we find the most authentic examples.

The criteria

Underdog: You need to be or to represent the unfancied team. The stripling, the underdog. The perpetually unlucky. The cosmically doomed. A heroic performance from a champion, however brilliant, can never meet the stereotype because it is anticipated. It is expected, not hoped for. Roger Federer is not a clutch player. Andy Murray – dour, usually injured, operating with a metal hip, and representing the perpetually underperforming British, can be.

Flawed: Your character can be flawed; there can have been past misbehaviour, dastardly deeds, or question-marks for which the striving soul seeks redemption or atonement by means of self-sacrifice on the field of combat. Selfless: You play not for personal glory but for your band of brothers, for your tribe, for your country. Any personal milestones are subordinated, or even sacrificed, to the good of the whole.

Damaged: The sense of heroic achievement can be heightened by physical disadvantage, damage or injury, particularly where sustained or aggravated during the combat. So Murray’s damaged hip, Stokes’ knee, some sense that the soldier is running on empty sand just holding the crate together.

There is no option: circumstance; the rules and laws of nature compel you to fight: you have crossed the Rubicon, accepted the challenge, there are no substitutions allowed, no way back, all reviews are exhausted: no-one is left who save the team’s skin. (This is all about the team’s skin; the hero’s wellbeing is beside the point.) The threshold has been crossed: you must fight or die. The exit route is cut off. Normans drilled holes in their boats. There are no wickets remaining. There is only one way out alive, and that is straight through the storm.

Others have failed: those who are there to do what needs to be done have failed. The bowler that bats, the back row forward who drops a goal, the goalie who scores from a corner. You are put in a situation where the hero is not the right person to carry the game, but you the best person.

Superhuman performance: your performance is not just excellent, careful, accurate, and on the money: the chips being as far down as they are, mere flawless excellence is no longer enough to pull through survive: the clutch player reaches superhuman levels, take extraordinary risks, and they come off.