I am not sure if all sports tend towards regimentation and over-commercialisation. And, as they grow, sportsmen choose safety over flair and security over danger. Perhaps popular sports and sportsmen do. Those who pump money into sport and keep its administrators in limousines and private aircraft expect predictability in return, and only controlled upsets. But sport has a way of upsetting calculations.
Wins and losses apart, we watch sport to share in the communication of rapture. Joy at performing is in the DNA of sportsmen. It is this we want to be a part of.
But how many of the players in the football World Cup seem to be really enjoying themselves, playing with abandon, replacing the mathematically plotted moves on the coach’s computer with runs and goals of imagination and daring?
France’s Kylian Mbappe stands out for his skill and speed, and communicates fun and self-belief. Such things are contagious, as his teammates will aver. Mexico’s Hirving Lozano is another who stood out. As Muhammad Ali said, “The man who has no imagination has no wings.” Both these players are young and perhaps haven’t adjusted their game to suit the suits yet. Maturity is often a compromise in sport.
I remember the Uruguayan star Enzo Francescoli at the first Nehru Cup in Kolkata. He was young, charming and brilliant. And he would often take off on runs that startled his coach.“We never discussed this” he would admit later. I
It is this feeling of “How did it happen?” or “Where did that idea come from?” inspired by actions that seem simple to the performer but are often beyond the understanding of the viewer that distinguishes the special stars.
Sportsmen describing being “in the zone” usually talk of a high level of enjoyment and total absorption in what they are doing. There is something of the child engrossed in his toys about this state of mind.
Doing easily what others find difficult is a time-honoured definition of “talent”. Manifestly enjoying what you do and taking the more difficult option just for the heck of it defines the kind of sportsman I am talking about. Perfect understanding, wrote the poet A.E. Housman, sometimes almost extinguishes pleasure. So too does standardisation and hyper-professionalism.
The former, said the writer Eduardo Galeano, “negates joy, kills fantasy, and outlaws daring” while the latter causes players “to run a lot and risk little.” Major football tournaments are full of players who run a lot and risk little, which is why the ones who do the reverse (Iniesta in Spain’s losing tie with Russia) stand out.
It might be the romantic view that the risk-averse sportsman sucks enjoyment out of a competition especially when the practical view is that all competition is about winning.
“Cricketers enjoy their game much more than other sportsmen,” John Reid, former New Zealand captain once said. It is an interesting theory.
When you saw a Virender Sehwag bat or a Kapil Dev hit four sixes in a row to avoid a follow-on in a Test match, you knew you were watching the mavericks; the ones who refused to be boring and predictable. Even team sports have a place for the such individuals; in fact, team sports survive on those who are better than those around them, and are treated that way.
The ability to surprise is a gift that artists and sportsmen carry in their armoury. Among recent cricketers, A.B. de Villiers brought to the crease the ability to not merely surprise, but even startle as he evolved into the 360-degree batsman.
T20 cricket has revealed a whole new layer of batsmanship that consists primarily in doing apparently impossible things with relative ease. A Sarfaraz Khan or a Rishabh Pant bat with the knowledge that predictability is the enemy of success in the format, and are constantly re-mixing the possible.
Do you have to be a big hitter or a flamboyant fielder to indicate pleasure? Not necessarily. Rahul Dravid played 31,258 deliveries in Test cricket, more than any other batsman, and he enjoyed every one of them.
Yet, the element of danger is an exciting aspect of a sportsman’s make-up. Kevin Peterson had it, Hardik Pandya has it; David Gower and Wasim Akram had it, K.L. Rahul and Jasprit Bumrah have it. The likelihood of something spectacular, something near-impossible hangs in the air. So too does the possibility of a silly dismissal or a wayward delivery.
A long career usually flattens out the danger. Sachin Tendulkar went from being a batsman approaching genius (and occasionally catching up with it) to one who, in the interests of the team and his own injury-laden body, had to settle for being safe and prolific rather than flamboyant and prolific.
Over the years, statistics will be forgotten, and what will remain in the memory are the specific shots or startling deliveries — Tendulkar off Shoaib Akhtar, Shane Warne to Mike Gatting — which will provide the tapestry to sport’s claim to being art.