Bowlers playing for England and Australia in the current Ashes cricket series are collectively meant to deliver at least 540 balls each day (that’s 90 overs of six balls each – more if they bowl any no-balls or wides). If one side’s bowlers cannot capture all ten wickets in one day, they must toil on into the next.
Each of the five Test matches in the men’s series, and one in the women’s, last for a maximum of five days. To win, bowlers usually need to get the other side all-out twice. Australia’s men’s team won their first Ashes Test with only minutes to go in the final session of the fifth day.
In many ways, this biennial series feels a battle against time itself. Unlike most other sports such as football, whose matches are over in a short, set period of time, Test cricket represents abstract, long-term, targeted behaviour – something that people actually do on a daily basis. In this sense, the players in this Ashes series can teach us something about how the mind responds to time – and how this is linked to reward, threat and anxiety.
