The Hindu : Sport : There is glory in living dangerously

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Nov 24, 2004

Sport

Sport

There is glory in living dangerously

By Nirmal Shekar

As Virender Sehwag came back from the lunch break, launched a breathtaking assault on the South African bowling and then re-entered the dressing room after falling leg before to Andrew Hall, a longtime fan of the Indian opener looked aghast and said: "Where was the need for such all-out attack?''

Leaving him to drown himself in his own misery, this writer departed the scene with the kind of wholesome feeling of fulfilment very rarely experienced while watching Test matches in India. Thank heavens not everything in life and sport is based on need!

For, just imagine what sport would be if everything was strictly need-based in the narrowest possible sense, if every sportsman played by the book and did exactly what was dictated by logic, by common sense; if every top player was a model of sane conservatism and shunned all kinds of risks all the time.

In short, can you imagine a world of sport where the performers consistently chose not to live dangerously, as Sehwag did in those glorious few minutes after lunch at Kanpur on Tuesday? What kind of an experience would sports watching be then? What kind of excitement and thrills will be on offer when every top player steered clear of all kinds of danger every single time?

Yes, Sehwag went for a bit more than he might have needed to. But, so what? That is the way the man plays. And, what is sport without danger? What would it be if the top performers showed a sort of uniform respect for danger, meekly acknowledged its presence and kept well away from it?

To be sure, all of us love safety. In man, the survival instinct is a basic instinct. But in certain areas of human activity, including sport, there are deeds that call for a total defiance of that basic instinct. And in the performance of such extraordinary deeds lies great sporting glory.

Matter of life or death

Of course, when it comes to defying the survival instinct in sport, there are two distinct categories of defiance. In most popular sports, including cricket, the act of defiance is metaphorical; death is no more than a metaphor.

But in a handful of sports such as Formula One racing, bull fighting and boxing, the defiance is real, as real as the proximity of death. In such cases the risks are so much more, and failure often means more than just losing a wicket/contest/place in the team.

Yet, in a broad sense, the primordial psychological trait that drives a sportsman to ignore the risk element, which allows him to shut out the possibility of disaster and reach out for surpassing glory, is pretty much the same whether it happens in cricket or motor racing.

In a long career, even the most conservative of players with a known inclination to avoid risks do live dangerously once in a while. Geoffrey Boycott, that great master of logic, once scored a brisk (by his standards) unbeaten 80 to help England beat the West Indies after Gary Sobers had made a sporting declaration on the final day of the Port of Spain Test in March 1968.

But there is a breed that is born to live dangerously. Sehwag is as good an example as any in cricket. With these men, the exception is safety-first tactics, and rule is living on the knife-edge, flirting with danger day after day. They are the tightrope walkers whose eyes look straight ahead and never stray to the ground below.

Watching these lovers of danger is a great joy all the time for a very few; a mixture of joy and disappointment to a good majority. For, given their attitude, these danger-loving sportsmen court failure almost as often as they embrace success and glory.

Indeed, it takes a very special DNA-powered attitude to ignore popular wisdom and play as Sehwag does. This century, and several other big, medium and small innings the Delhi opener has played have all been personal statements, a strong expression of will as much as an enactment of schoolboy fantasies on the international stage.

You must have watched the late Ayrton Senna in an overtaking manoeuvre at a corner, must have been a witness to a breathtaking, impossible long pot by the snooker pro Jimmy White, or sat at ringside when John McEnroe played one of his hundreds of incredible camel-through-the-eye-of-the-needle angled winners to realise what risk taking is all about in sport.

Fearless? No way!

Nobody can be truly fearless. You achieve that condition only when you are dead! And Senna was aware of the dangers as much as anyone else. But his greatness lay in his refusal to accept fear and stay away from danger. It is because of this the great man constantly pushed back frontiers.

In a sport that is far safer, a player such as Sehwag can take great risks without fearing for his life. There is the popular notion that Sehwag plays the way he does because he lacks a solid defensive technique. There may be a semblance of truth there but the real reason he plays the way he does is because he loves taking risks.

In wilder and darker ages several centuries ago, risk taking was a matter of everyday routine for man. The world has grown a lot more conservative, and safer, with the passing of centuries. But, to a handful who seek great glory, risk taking comes naturally.

And, to those of us who love watching sportsmen who live dangerously, there is always the fond hope that Sehwag would continue on his high risk path to greater glory.

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