It led me to run a small poll, and I found that roughly 2/3 of respondents felt that their team was the worst at cleaning up the tail. Most who commented were adamant that not only was their team the worst at it, they were the worst by some margin.
There seemed to be a general cricket fan type one error. A type one error is an error of seeing a pattern that does not exist (or, more generally coming to an incorrect conclusion based on evidence that seems conclusive but is not). Perhaps this was caused by the fact that when we watch our team struggle to clean up the tail, it takes a long time, while a team cleaning up the tail efficiently does not take as long, so uses up less of our memory space. Or perhaps it is just because cricket teaches us to think negatively. Mark Richardson even wrote a whole book about the power of negative thinking in cricket.
That led me to a question. What team is actually the worst?
