Prema Jayakumar

‘What I know most surely about morality and the duty of man, I owe to sport.’ Albert Camus was sure about the influence of sport on his life. The statement seemed an odd one from a philosopher who wrote so much on what morality meant and when lack of conflict became immoral. It seemed a rather shaky foundation to build one’s life on. Perhaps the fact that you could have conflict, bounded by strict rules and could take place without losses except of prestige influenced him. But think a little more about it and you realise that it is the one aspect of life that is wholly bound by rules and the rules are followed meticulously throughout the time of play. I don’t know if the morality part of it still holds as good as earlier because, as with all conflicts, in battles or games, the rules of fairness tend to be diluted if the players get a chance. There is almost a feeling that all is fair in games and war as long as you don’t actually cheat. But otherwise, they are not only rule-bound, the rules change if they do at all with painful slowness. Perhaps it is because all games require rules and rules work only if everyone who plays agrees on them and obeys them. Not just the players, in the case of these televised games, but the spectators too.

With the T-20 World Cup and the Euro-cup being played, discussions of cricket and football are in the air. In fact most conversations wind up being about the previous day’s games, with analyses, suggestions of what could have been done and how the captain made a mistake. But there are hardly any discussions on transgressions of rules or the need to change the existing rules.

The demise of Mr. Duckworth, who formulated the rules regarding victory in case a cricket match is washed out by rain, reminded me how arbitrary the rules of any game are. However many aids are brought to bear on the decisions to be made in the field, cameras, sound boxes what have you, the umpires are still the arbiters of destiny and the rules there for anyone to refer to.

And these rules apply equally to the game of marbles or hide and seek played by the children in the compound or the house. The rules are set before play starts and adhered to strictly, even the most recalcitrant participant having to play by those rules. There has been a whole book brought out by Penguin called ‘Boundary Lab – Inside the Global Experiment called Sport’ written by Nandan Kamath.

These boundaries are tested again and again by the players. One knows of the ‘Hand of God’ goal. But one does not know about the frustrations that had led to it, when the player might have felt that rules were always in favour of the opposing team. One knows that provoking an opponent into a physical attack is definitely not sportsmanlike, but Zidane was provoked, rose to the provocation and had to sit out the match. Running out the non-striker is considered un-gentlemanly, but is done without a thought when (s)he is unwittingly out of the crease. I don’t think the old stanza about ‘For when the One Great Scorer comes to mark against your name,/ He writes – not that you won or lost – but how you played the game.’ The ‘one great scorer’ or Chitragupta might keep track of transgressions, but the need to win is often stronger.

Still, in spite of rules being stretched as far as they will go and perhaps a little farther, sports remains one of the most conservative of activities. Change of rules and formats have taken place, bowing to an awareness of the change in times and the demands of the market place, but by and large, the games that are played as sport, as competitions in the arena of the world gaze, are still recognizable as what they are.

George Orwell called sports ‘war minus the shooting’, but if so, so much the better isn’t it? Anything that would allow patriotism to show off its colours without spilling blood is such a blessing. And, if played well, so much pleasure for the spectator. And so much fun for the sitting room analysts and commentators!