I have never been a very athletic person. In school, I could barely run 100 meters without, literally, reaching a point where I thought my lungs would explode. I was that tall, thin guy who was spotted early as basketball centre-forward, save that I couldn’t be on the court for more than 10 minutes—max. In cricket, I choose to swing my bat wildly for fours and sixes (entirely different matter that I made very few solid contacts) instead of dabbing the ball for a quick single, for obvious reasons.
For a long time, watching just about any sport, live or on TV, instilled in me deep inferiority complex. I so desperately wanted to play them all: football, cricket, basketball, baseball even.
My state of mind was not unlike that of Julian Treslove, the foundering ex-BBC producer in Howard Jacobson’s Booker-winning novel The Finkler Question:
“He [Treslove] was a man who ordinarily woke to a sense of loss… When there was nothing palpable he could reproach himself for having lost, he found the futility he needed in world affairs or sport.”
Much like Treslove acted when the English cricket team went down, I used to plunge, headlong, into a miserable bout of self-pity whenever England football team lost a crucial World Cup encounter. Or when Mark Waugh was out for a pittance. Even when The Rock defeated Stone Cold Steve Austin in Wrestlemania in a pseudo contest.
But the big difference between Treslove and I was that unlike Jacobson’s restless hero, I really loved sports. My bitterness stemmed more from my physical limitations than from any deep-seated emotional void that I wanted to fill by watching sports.
In time, I learned to accept my frail health much like I accepted the fact that the ‘love of my life’ in school would not deign look my way even if I planted myself in front of her house with a begging bowl my entire life. She had better things to do. (Of course, it doesn’t hurt to believe now that it was pure infatuation.)
Likewise, I grew up on sports. No longer do I spend whole night trawling the net (since the TV used to be in my parents’ room) on the UEFA Champions League Final day. Or, when I did get a chance on the telly, wait with baited breath, three in the morning, to watch Jacques Kallis caress a four through the covers to complete a majestic hundred. Or to egg on the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLII only to see them go down, whimpering, after a perfect season.
And yet, like the memories of my (supposed) first love, the yearning to catch a bit of hot on-field action sputters in my bosom every so often. As I watched the Nepali football team play Afghanistan in the semifinal of the SAF Championship on Friday, I could feel the same urge tugging at my heart.
Sports, like love, defy logic. Otherwise, why risk heartbreak at the fate of a team you hardly know?
The strange thing is I didn’t even know Nepal was playing that day. But when the match started in the evening, and a small crowd built up in front of the TV sets in office, I was, for a moment, truly riveted by the spectacle.
But I soon realized it was more a fling than true love, mere flickers of that long-lost romance. At halftime, I had had enough. I would not be bothered, I decided, by such petty stuff as the result of a SAF Championship semi-final (pray, not even the Asian Cup!). I was heading home.
As luck would have it, my Safa tempo ride back home was cut short bang in front of the City Centre at Kamalpokhari. The tempo didn’t just stop. Sputtering and clanking, it came to a juddering halt, as if by some divine intervention. Reluctantly, I hopped off, bracing myself for 10 minutes of a rather chilly walk. But then, a frisson of noise stopped me on my tracks; a crescendo, halted midway. It didn’t take me long to figure out it was the vocal crowd on the fifth floor of the Centre rooting for the national team.
Trapped!
The score was still nil-nil when I entered the raucous scene. No sooner had I nestled myself at the far corner with glass a beer, Nepal was on the score sheet. The crowd erupted. Then rapidly ebbed, in disbelief. Apparently, the ball had already crossed the touchline before the Nepali striker nimbly angled it into the net.
Minutes later, Afghanistan had a near miss of its own. The ball dropped inches in front of the Nepali goalline after hitting the top bar.
At the end of 90 minutes of enthralling contest, with the game still in the balance, I was expecting penalties right away. Mais non, extra-time beckoned. The tension in the air started building up again. Boys with first sprouts on their enviously slick chins started nervously pulling on their hookas. Desperate fathers tried to sooth the little ones, who clearly didn’t get what all the fuss was about. The overworked waiters, between their runs to pesky customers, every so often managed a peek at the screen from between the tinkling beer bottles.
Then, out of the blue, Afghanistan scored, on the 11th minute of extra time. Babal Arezo slotted home the decider after a majestic run into the D-box. One on one, Nepali keeper Kiran Chemjong could do little about Arezo’s deft tap-in.
On the final whistle heads dropped and a murmur of disappointment settled on the packed crowd. Oh, all those chances Nepal had squandered!
In a cruel coincidence the Nepali cricket team had earlier in the day gone down to, who else, Afghanistan in the semifinals of the ACC Twenty20 Cup; trounced rather, by nine wickets after the Men in Blue were bundled out for a paltry 68.
Anyway, I am safely over the twin losses now. Over to Orwell’s side. Like Orwell, arguably the most influential polemicist and literary critic of the 20th century, I too believe all sports are rank nonsense and beneath the hobbies of a rational being. Seriously.
In the opening lines of this article, Orwell was talking about football. But his distaste of sports was universal.
“At the international level sport is frankly mimic warfare,” continues Orwell in his seminal 1945 essay. “But the significant thing is not the behavior of the players but the attitude of the spectators: and, behind the spectators, of the nations who work themselves into furies over these absurd contests, and seriously believe… that running, jumping and kicking a ball are tests of national virtue.”
So what if Orwell, the uber-rationalist in print, was anything but rational in his private life! He smoked heavily in spite of his horrendous bronchitis. He motorcycled in blinding rain and feigned drowning in artificial shipwrecks. As Jacintha Buddicom recalls in Eric and Us, Orwell enjoyed fishing and shooting rabbits, and liked experimenting on hedgehogs—by cooking them alive.
These days I don’t have the time to follow sports. For, like Orwell, I have real things to do. A veritable routine, if you will. At eight, I force myself off my warm bed. Then I browse the papers (just hard news, thank you); gorge on my flakes; and catch an invariably overflowing Safa tempo to work.
Yet, I am always running late. So the first thing I do when I get to office, as you can imagine, is punch in crickinfo in the Google toolbar to check the latest scores.
biswasbaral@gmail.com
Related story
Falling in Love
