The term, "momentum" is often misused in cricket

“Virat Kohli’s outside edge was the reason behind his bad patch, not his lost momentum.”

You might have heard commentators and cricket experts use the word, “Momentum” a lot of times. Although it applies to various other sports as well, the term momentum has many meanings in the game of cricket. Although the term is commonly used, is it really a factor which determines the performance of a team, or an individual for that matter? These questions may raise many eyebrows since this term is something which has been used so commonly by many people.

“Virat Kohli is out of form.” “One innings, is all it will take to get his momentum going.” These were words uttered by many experts in the commentary box while watching Virat Kohli fail match after match. Everyone watched that damp period when Virat Kohli was struggling to connect the ball with his bat against the likes of world class bowlers like James Anderson and Stuart Broad.

We all saw that edgy Virat Kohli who had lost “all his momentum”. You could say that Virat Kohli “lost touch” or is “out of form”. But these are terms you would use with someone who either hasn’t played for a long time, or someone who is physically unfit. What I would call this “loss of momentum” is nothing but a discovery of weakness. We have seen Virat Kohli getting out numerous number of times with that outside edge. It was only a matter of time until Virat’s weakness was discovered and exploited.

Virat Kohli worked hard to get rid of any weaknesses in his game

That patch was eventually gone after the hard-work Virat put in to get rid of the weakness. You can’t say that his one innings against the West Indies turned his fortunes. It was Virat’s hard-work that put this weakness away and look beyond it. The viewer’s inability to see beyond the camera here is the reason behind the coining of this term ‘momentum’.

Although from the previous example it could be seen that momentum is merely a physical quantity and not a factor which determines a player’s or team’s success, this term could be looked into with a different angle. Momentum is also a term experts use, to refer to the flow of success for a player or team, eg. if a team is performing well, and winning most of their games, “their players are in good form” and “their momentum is good”. How about we replace these sentences with: “The players are in good touch” “the confidence is high”.

Confidence is a major factor which may be affected if the momentum is not going a team’s or a player’s way. If Virat Kohli was high on confidence even after his edgy performances, his recovery period could have been far quicker. Thus, the terms momentum and confidence resonate in the context of cricket terms. Virat Kohli’s performances were hampered by confidence and not momentum. The confidence that Virat Kohli acquired was due to hard-work behind the scenes and not by definition of a single innings.

Hence, momentum is a redundant term, according to me, and doesn’t really exist in cricket. Confidence as a psychological advantage does create a balance between two opposite sides, but momentum as understood by people as the effect of a single on screen showing, doesn’t really exist. If people mean to use momentum as a representation of confidence, then it makes perfect sense.