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Sports : General
By Nirmal Shekar
He then went on to say that everyone, from the most celebrated critic in the land to the pub pundit down the road, had predicted that this was the Indian cricket team's best chance in two decades to win a Test series outside the sub-continent. Unpredictable? He must have been kidding (which, in fact, he wasn't). As a matter of fact, it was all so predictable. The moment the Indian cricketers had their passports stamped at the Immigration desks at the Grantley Adams airport in Barbados, the gut feeling that the revival of the much-maligned Windies batting was round the corner was something that was tough to overcome. Given the track record of Indian cricketers travelling outside the sub-continent in the last 16 years, the events that unfolded at Georgetown, Guyana, could have been predicted by a 10-year-old who can't tell a googly from an out-swinger! Then again, an intriguing aspect of world sport over the last weekend has been the boldly predictable patterns it has witnessed. Indian bowling being torn apart in Georgetown was as predictable as day giving way to night. Michael Schumacher taking pole position on Saturday and then standing right in the middle of the podium with the huge bottle of champagne in hand at Imola in Italy the next day — your grandmother who occasionally flips channels and occasionally spots Ferrari's red sea of celebration briefly might have predicted that one. Tiger Woods smiling as the green jacket is being eased down his broad shoulders at the Augusta National in Georgia — even if you have never stepped on a golf course in your entire life, you could have seen that coming. Unpredictability is the very soul of sport; but it is a rather elusive soul. We seldom get close to it. V.V.S.Laxman and Rahul Dravid batting all day long against Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne and India coming back from the dead to beat the mighty Australians in Kolkata....how wonderfully soul-lifting, how remarkably unpredictable! Goran Ivanisevic, playing courtesy a wild card offered by the All England Club, and a 125-1 outsider, beating Pat Rafter in an epic five setter on People's Monday to crown himself Wimbledon champion at the age of 29 after losing in three earlier finals...how outrageously unpredictable, how marvellously heart-warming! A part of the reason why we enjoy such dramatic turns of events in sports is because they catapult an underdog to superstar status briefly. And this, cheering the underdog and seeing the individual or the team bring up an unlikely triumph, is at the very basis of all sporting excitement. But over the last weekend, most sports fans had no such luck — unless you seriously believed that the West Indians, playing at home even in an era when their cricket has touched its nadir, would be huge underdogs against the visiting Indians!
Monopoly is monotony
As much as we celebrate stunning twists that result in an unlikely unsung hero turning up at the coronation, for the most part, sport is about the predictable. Day in and day out, sport is about Tiger Woods overcoming a brief slump to reassociate himself with Grand Slam glory, about Pete Sampras winning Wimbledon after Wimbledon after Wimbledon, about the Australian team leaving behind the odd traumatic tour to resume its journey as the modern cricket's juggernaut. As a spectacle, sport may fall several notches below what we expect of it, perhaps, when the Australian cricketers outplay the world's second best team 5-1 in a one-day series in South Africa, when overnight leader Tiger Woods sets out on his imperial march on the fourth day, looking as invincible as ever, or when Michael Schumacher starts from pole and predictably takes the chequered flag. But predictability is the very heart of sport. It is its heart-beat. Unpredictability may be its soul. It is the mundane certainty of Woods starting favourite at the Slams, of Sampras — until recently — entering Wimbledon as an odds-on favourite, of Michael Schumacher beginning every race looking a clear winner, that drives sport on an everyday basis. For, predictability is sport's fuel of choice. It is what keeps the engine going. Some, perhaps even many, might say predictability is boring. For many years, one has sat in the press box on the centre court at Wimbledon, hearing the lament: "Ah, how boring, it is going to be Sampras again.'' Soon, if you have not already, you'd hear this about Woods. And, as for Michael Schumacher, it has already been said a million times. Yet, when you scratch the surface, predictability is hardly boring. For it takes genius, quite often, to generate a predictable pattern. Winning three Masters titles in six years, and the third while still only 26, winning seven Wimbledon titles in eight years and a record 13 Grand Slam titles, winning four drivers' championships and looking good enough to take four more before the career ends...all these things are works of genius. Which, of course, Woods, Sampras and Schumacher are. When genius dominates, sport may be a little short on drama. But sport itself is a winner, rather than a loser, because of this. For, drama is pedestrian; acts of genius are not.
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