Sports - the ultimate

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better. - Samuel Beckett

And tattooed on forearm of Stanislas Wawrinka, at least till he had won his first grand slam

What’s there to not like in sports? They are founded on basic human traits - sense of competition, exhilaration of achievement, display of power, test of mental toughness, showmanship, overcoming barriers of human physique, overcoming any barrier for that matter. Life itself apart, sport is the closest representation of Life - with its uncertainties and its drama.

I have grown to love sports, embrace them, feel their warmth. Part of it comes from the cynical state I find myself in, partly justified by the current times, and partly my exaggerated emotions. It is so difficult to trust most things. The corporate world is fake, the society is deeply flawed, the government is corrupt, most media are biased and prejudiced. In such an environment, sports seem to be the only thing that is genuine, apart from art. (Of course, keeping aside the malice of ‘fixing’ or doping which can rob the authenticity of sports.) In sports, human emotions find expression in purest and instantaneous form. Nothing, other than an art form, can reveal a human better. The ancient Olympians competing nude were probably emphasising this fact, that nothing is hidden when playing a sport. (the word Gymnasium is derived from Greek gymos meaning nude!) When I am watching a sport - I know what I am getting - exhilaration, frustration, disappointment, rage, energy, skill, guts, good, bad, average, mind body, spirit - everything true and pure.

I have never played any sports with any seriousness. Thus I feel disadvantaged in appreciating the true soul of a sport, somewhat an outsider trying to force into an elite club. In fact it sounds rude and vulgar to have never played anything seriously and to write (sounding knowledgeable) about it. Nevertheless, I have tried to keep up by constantly reading and hearing about sports. And the more I explore, the more I am enamoured.

What’s there to not like in sports? At times I feel that when we see a sportsman perform, we are seeing yet another iteration of something that he has practised thousands of time. But that is yards away from truth. Because each iteration is different. And the human element comes in. Each time, the body feels different, the mind feels different. I have felt it myself on the rare occasions when I have played. Some days, the body flows smoothly and on others it refuses to yield.   

Sports have three aspects - the body, the mind, and the heart - just like life. Each sport has separate levels of importance of these three but none can be ignored completely. In fact, sports require a fine balance of the three. You can go through anything (life, job, marriage) by ignoring one or two of these, but not sports. Talking about the body part - in very few sports is this not very important - chess for example. Most sports are gruelling on the body and elite sportsmen train all a level which is beyond imagination for most. High intensity tennis matches running for hours, or each Formula One race can make players lose 4-5 kgs weight. In most sports movies (English or Hindi), the rigorous work-out parts where the protagonist slogs to gain strength are the most interesting (Imagine Rocky, Chak De, Dangal, Bhaag Milkha Bhaag). I read somewhere that cricket, fast bowling is a very unnatural action for humans, and thus requires rigorous practise. While seemingly an obvious point, I realised this only when pointed out. Wasim Akram said in an interview that they would run up and bowl hours on end in hot sun. I wondered why boxing or wrestling have rounds of just 2 minutes before realising how much stamina and power goes into fighting at such high intensity. I used to think badminton is about hitting smashes and ending points quickly before realising there is more deception. For the uninitiated, even fifteen minutes of good quality badminton can be draining - it requires stamina, agility, and nimbleness.

The physical aspect is constantly developing - the players keep pushing the limitations of the human body to take it to the next level. As sports get more competitive, the margins between the physical aspects of the players, at least what they can acquire through training, is reducing. I remember reading an interview by Edwin Moses where he mentioned how he had pioneered and planned many new training techniques. Increasingly, most elite sportsmen today are aware of advanced techniques and to that extent, the differences are getting fudged. If anything, some sportsmen would have innate, genetic advantage. I have read such articles on Usain Bolt and about Lance Armstrong. How they have the perfect height, body metabolism, oxygen burning rate etc.

However, very few sports are just about raw power, skills and technique are equally, if not more, important. It is difficult for a player to be all-conquering on sheer power or stamina. Nadal brought greater power in men’s tennis, but Federer was able to outpace him on many occasions. Cricket as a sport had lesser reliance on body strength (leaving apart fast bowling). It was more about batsmen’s technique, spinner’s tricks, and just holding yourself in the field. But this has changed dramatically - physical fitness is paramount and it shows in fielding, running between the wickets, hitting power. Fielders diving to stop the ball, spearing throws from the boundary, taking athletic air-borne catches are now common and expected. So are the videos of Virat Kohli’s gym training! Still one does come across cricketers like Romesh Pawar (very portly spinner) and Dwayne Leverock of Bermuda.  

Even the most physical sport would have a cerebral aspect. I can have an off day in office (mostly) but no sportsman can afford that. All elite sportsmen or teams are assisted by psychologists, counsellors, conditioning coaches etc. Each sport requires strategy, and presence of mind. A tennis player is assessing the opposite player’s strengths and weaknesses, court conditions, weather, crowd etc. even while he is playing a shot. Even sports like long jump, high jump etc. require constant strategising - assessing the body and the conditions. In cricket, a captain has to think of many things parallely - how are his players playing, how is the pitch playing, what is opposition’s strategy, field placings, team players who are in bad mood, umpires, weather conditions, crowd misbehaviour and so on. In a team sport while a lot of thinking is put on the captain’s shoulders, it is only partially so. Each player has to think for himself in the heat of the moment. Despite being a team sport, cricket remains, a duel between the batsman and the bowler. How tough it is to keep your wits when in the action is something only a sportsman can tell - imagine driving a car at 250 kmph and still being aware of the route, the maneuvering of other drivers, track condition, condition of the car, fuel position, tyre condition, next pit-stop etc. True that these people train hard and most of what seems challenging to a layman becomes intuitive to them. Still, to be successful internationally requires extreme mental sharpness. Captains like Mike Brearley, Mark Taylor, MS Dhoni are known for their nous. Tennis players like Agneiszka Radwanska, Martina Hingis, Justine Henine are known for their mental strength which allowed them to succeed against hard-hitting opponents. Sportsmen need to be able to constantly think, identify patterns and churn-up new responses or strategies to surprise the opponents.     

I feel the biggest part of any sport is the emotional. To realise that your body is not listening to you when a crucial game is underway requires reserves of mind over matter. Nowadays the differences in physical aspect can be minimised given that the training techniques are known and imitable. Even the strategy can be managed to some extent - hire good coaches, get ring-side opinions, video experts who pick smallest of nuances of the opposition’s game. But the heart cannot be outsourced or imitated. How will a player respond when he is physically pushed to the limit? When the opposition is intimidating? When the conditions are against him? How will a debutant handle himself when he walks into a stadium packed with antagonistic crowd? (While running one half-marathon, I got to enter the Jawahar Lal Nehru stadium in Delhi. I got goosebumps standing on the jogging track and looking around at the stands which seemed to engulf me, even when they were empty. I tried to project what a batsman would feel when he goes out to bat with his side in difficult position, the opposition on top, and a hostile crowd jeering him. I felt deep respect and awe for anybody who has gone through this. The amphitheatre is designed to be intimidating.) That is why comeback victories make the best stories, because they are about the ultimate achievement of confidence over doubt. Those are the occasions which truely distinguish a champion from a good player. A Steve Waugh hitting a century when his position in team was in threat.  

Sport is totally individualistic - it gives the life-lesson of ‘standing up’. A bowler at the start of his run-up bowling a crucial over, the batsman at the other end looking to secure a win for his team, a striker at the instant when he has to drive a pass into the goal, tennis player facing the championship point, or the one serving it, the formula one driver in his car, the long jumper at the start of his run-up, the boxer when he is getting thrashed ruthlessly, a gymnast mid-air, a shooter just before the gold-medal shot - each is on his own. No family, no team, no coach, no friend, nobody. But yourself. You may cry in anguish, look at the stands for family or the coach, they may nod sympathetically, even the entire crowd may feel for you - but nobody has to go through the experience but yourself - when the body is broken, the mind is scrambled, only the will survives. That is the honour of the sport and the making of a sportsman.

A sport requires determination and fighting spirit. And a champion mixes consistency and hunger into this. Watching tennis, on many occasions I have felt that a player is playing brilliantly, but after a year I find that he is nowhere on the circuit. I have realised that great players are able to do three things - be excellent consistently. seize the critical moments firmly, and invariably claw out of losing situation just by immense self-confidence. Javed Miandad’s last ball six, MSD’s six in world cup final, many Steve Waugh innings, AB de Villiers and Faf Du Plessis playing out an entire day against Australia, Goran Ivanisevic’s dream Wimbledon, Roger Federer’s 2016 Wimbledon are examples of players getting the result just out of their will. At such moments, I can almost see the image of a player drilling through a mountain. That today nothing is going to touch me.  

Still, the sport demands that you acknowledge that it is the biggest. Thus, the need to maintain humility in victory and courage in loss. Sports present both sides of the coin in the same instance. You need to take a loss calmly, with composure, and without ill-will. To be able to admit being ‘beaten by a better performance’. To have the balance to say that it is only a sport and a loss (even in the most important match of the career) is not the end of the world, yet at the same time have the hunger to correct the loss. On the other hand, you need to be able to be graceful in victory. There is always debate about how a player should celebrate a win - a bowler giving a send-off or abusing a beaten batsman. Adrenaline rush or ambition should have a boundary, which is till the respect of the opposite player. Instances of a strong team ill-treating the weaker side make for ugly viewing - although that too is a reflection of life. Instead it is inspiring to see grace in a strong side - Andrew Flintoff consoling Brett Lee during 2005 Ashes, or the West Indies team of 1980s and 1990s. The current bunch of tennis champions have shown this admirably.

An important aspect of any team sport are the team dynamics - how do the players mesh together. Very few teams can be consistently successful if even one player is not contributing. That adds to the complexity of a team sport. It is not always possible for each of the 11 players to like each other - still they function. I think it is more about the players having respect for each other, if not penchant. And it requires players to be always aware of their roles - some of which may not be as eye-catching as others. So a player with more flamboyant role would always be more visible than others - in cricket a striker against a run-accumulator or a searing fast bowler against a medium pacer, in football a forward against a defender or mid-fielder. A coach/manager/captain has to manage the egos in the team and contain the sense of deep envy which may pervade.  

I wonder how do players acknowledge a better player - within team or otherwise. In real life I have seen very few acknowledgments of somebody else’s superiority. For instance, in corporate world it is almost blasphemous to acknowledge that someone is better because it shows that you are not ambitious or competitive and, that you are paving way for the other person’s accelerated rise up the ladder. But I have heard or read about many players openly acknowledge that somebody is far superior. Two reasons - (a) in such a open world, it is difficult not to acknowledge somebody who is clearly a superior player - Tendulkar vs a Hugh Morris, or a Federer vs a Lukas Rasol, and (b) in sports, acknowledging that someone is better does not take away the opportunity to still get better on odd, or at times important occasions - Ponting run out by substitute Pratt in critical 2005 Ashes test, Robin Soderling ending Nadal and Federer’s French Open in two successive years. When the difference between the players is stark, how does a relatively weaker player, say a Radek Stapanek face a Roger Federer? How does he motivate himself in a grand slam? Possibly out of love for his sport, or the spirit, or the belief that he can find another notch and may catch Federer below his best (RS has beaten RF twice). Those moments become truely memorable - when a player may not be the most skilled but still creates a legacy by giving a tough fight, by transcending his/her abilities in that fleeting moment of glory and giving a lifelong memory.

Over time, sports teaches empathy. Because at core each sportsman has the same story - of toil, of relentless training, of grit, of determination, of failure, of frustration, of tenacity, of injury, of recovery, of unfairness, of glory. This story ties all of them together. They know that only they have gone through what most others have not. So even the superstar sportsman would have respect for the lesser talented - like a sergeant major and a foot soldier in a trench.  And the superstar knows that on many occasions the margin between them is not much.

This is not to say that sports does not have ugly moments - way too many. But in that again sports mirror reality - basic human traits - envy, competition, rage, greed, pride. On many occasions these traits surface in the spur of the moment - a nasty tackle in football or cricket, or an unnecessary argument with the umpires in tennis, and the players are able to grow out of these. Over a longer term, sports separates superior individuals.

Sports reflect life closely and an important lesson it teaches is that life is not fair. Or the role of chance (a better word than destiny) in life. So one has to accept a poor umpiring decision which can turn the match, or an injury caused by somebody else’s stupidity. What does one do? Nothing - grin and bear it. You may cry in frustration, or pure rage, but you cannot do anything. Almost all great players have this monk-like quality of getting over such instances. Tendulkar or Dravid would just walk off after being given out incorrectly. Such instances can destroy the concentration and mental balance which elite sports requires, but great players are able to get over them. So evident during a tennis match, when disturbances from crowd, or from poor umpiring call. or from ball boys is not uncommon. But they just hold the composure. Also as in life, so in sports - things have a way of balancing out. So all great players realise that mostly misfortunes are evened by good-fortunes.

I would like to end this piece with a favourite story -

Arthur Ashe, the legendary tennis player was dying of AIDS which he got due to infected blood he received during a heart surgery in 1983. From the world over, he received letters from his fan, one of them conveyed: "Why does God have to select you for such a bad disease?".

To this Arthur Ashe replied: The world over - 50,000,000 children start playing tennis, 5,000,000 learn to play tennis, 500,000 learn professional tennis, 50,000 come to the circuit, 5000 reach the grand slam, 50 reach the Wimbledon, 4 to semi finals, 2 to finals. When I was the one holding the cup, I never asked god "Why me?". And today in pain, I should not be asking GOD "why me?"