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Sport is more than a numbers game

The true dimensions of athletic genius are not revealed in numbers and ranking points, writes Nirmal Shekar

ANY anthropologist who can tell between an authentic Neolithic arrowhead and a fake will also be able to tell you that our species’ obsession with rankings is a human universal. It’s got to do with our origins — hierarchies are an essential part of the human condition. We often feel compelled to create a pyramidical structure even where one is strictly not necessary.

And when something that is said or done appears to violate our sense of order and rank, our reactions can be at once primordial and over-the-top. In the event, it was with a touch of Oh-what’s-new cynicism that this writer has followed the monumental outrage triggered by the recently released International Cricket Council (ICC) rankings list of all-time-great players.

Of course, a bunch of bored schoolboys armed with a calculator and with access to www.cricinfo.com might have surely done a better job than the honourable experts to whom the ICC chose to hand over the job. As an exercise in ranking the finest players in history, this one was as arbitrary and subjective and flawed as it could have possibly been.

Injustice

While, predictably, most of the ire directed at the ICC from these shores was caused by the ‘injustice’ done to a little man from Mumbai who the ICC masterminds slotted in at No.26 in the list of batsmen, my own reaction on spotting a familiar name at No.59 in the list of bowlers bordered on temporary insanity — I just couldn’t stop laughing.

If you think ranking 25 willow wielders ahead of Sachin Tendulkar was a joke, then consider the placing of the greatest left-arm fast bowler in the game’s history — Wasim Akram — at No.59!

Statisticians are by nature methodical fellows who tend to play by the rules, however archaic those rules might sometimes appear to us. But these ICC guys have been wonderfully inventive, playing the rankings game with a devil-may-care freedom we generally associate with a balding buccaneer from Delhi. Then again, even Virender Sehwag might not have taken as many liberties with the bowlers as these ICC ‘experts’ have done with plain facts.

But all this is not the point, really. The point is, we needn’t have bothered. The point is, we shouldn’t have bothered. The point is, too much has been made of something that cannot so much as slice away a hair-breath from Tendulkar’s genius or do anything to dim the memories of the wonderful garden of ethereal delights into which a Shane Warne led us with his timeless art.

Why should we care about where some dim-witted committee has ranked Tendulkar or Warne or Akram when we know exactly where they belong — not only in our affections but also in our own mental list of great cricketers?

Shame

What is more, it is a shame if we cannot see beyond ranks and numbers when we think of a Tendulkar or a Garry Sobers or a Viv Richards. As a schoolboy, this writer worshipped Sobers but right now if you ask me how many Test runs the great man made or how many centuries he hit, I might have to log on to check those figures. Those numbers are not readily available in memory nor are they terribly relevant.

But the feelings are relevant — the feelings that a Sobers triggered deep inside every time you set eyes on him at the crease. What one has cherished are the memories of those effortless straight drives, those incredible slip catches.

What does a rank mean in this context? How would a mere number change the way you felt about a Tendulkar or a Warne?

The true dimensions of athletic genius are not revealed in numbers and ranking points but in the way a great sportsman — like an operatic genius or a master painter — draws you into an ocean of timelessness.

Great sporting performances can be transformative events for connoisseurs.

Watching Roger Federer at his best, it hardly seemed to matter what the scoreline was, what the playing surface was, who the opponent was. The great man’s art made for a new state of altered consciousness. Everything seemed irrelevant except the electrifying virtuosity of the Swiss genius.

This is precisely why one is wary of being drawn into a debate vis-À-vis Federer’s place in the list of all-time greats. It doesn’t matter where he is now; it doesn’t matter where he might end up pretty soon. The only thing that ever mattered was the beauty he created on court.

This is very much true in the case of Tendulkar too. It does not require cognitive acrobatics to rid ourselves of our obsession with ranking orders and see sport for what it really is. We merely need to lose a bit of our hardwiring.

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