Champion Australian cricketer Keith Miller was once asked how he coped with pressure as a player, especially given his stature as the country’s preeminent “allrounder”—equally capable with both bat and ball—and membership of a Test team later known as “The Invincibles.”
Storied BBC interviewer Michael Parkinson was Miller’s interlocutor, and the cricketer’s response became legendary. “I’ll tell you what pressure is. Pressure is a Messerschmitt up your arse. Playing cricket is not.”
It’s a sentiment with which fellow RAF fighter pilot Roald Dahl would have agreed, given Dahl’s status as a bona fide air ace who fought against a numerically superior Luftwaffe in April 1941’s doomed dogfight over Athens. Of 12 RAF 80 Squadron Hurricanes involved, five were shot down and four of their pilots were killed. Among the dead was Pat Pattle, the highest-scoring British Commonwealth ace of World War II.
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