Authenticity in sport
In the era of Twenty20, the 10-day Test is a thing of wonder, and how apposite that the late Bill Frindall was born just before the game began. Because in these matters I count myself a Frindallian. Despite the ludicrous ending when even timelessness was deemed to have a limit, the Durban match, in its extreme length, represents a striving for the quality that matters most in sport and is now most at risk in our shallow, TV-driven sporting world – authenticity.
A Test match is the pinnacle of the game because it is the least contrived. Nothing will happen for hours on end, then a dramatic shift occurs and the shape of the game suddenly becomes apparent like a glorious range of hills emerging through the mist. Tests are called that for a reason – they are a true test of strength, a striving for the truth about the respective merits of the competing teams. This striving for truth is a key part of what makes a sporting event authentic, along with a historical and cultural context that gives the event a meaning beyond the match.
I see this question of truth and authenticity from a dual standpoint. I love cricket, but I love chess, too – it is not uncommon to adore both, as former chess world championship challenger Nigel Short will attest – and both games have three codes: long-form, short-form and ultra-short-form. In theory, that can be an advantage in allowing the game to be played in different circumstances according to the time available. But there are dangers, too, because the long form of chess – usually around seven hours for a single game – can be a little trying for spectators and sponsors. Chess has its share of Allen Stanfords, who would like to see it dragged into the 21st century, shortened, fizzed up, given media and marketing appeal.
Chess is not a great spectator sport: players will usually bang out the first 15 or so moves in line with the existing theory of a given opening, then settle into a long think, perhaps spending half an hour on a single move. It makes an innings by Andrew Strauss seem electrifying. But that is its beauty – the chess, not an innings by Strauss. Chess players talk about the “truth” of a position, because that is what they are seeking: the best way to play a given position, not just the first plausible move that comes into their head.
In rapid-play (a game lasting an hour) or blitz chess (a game lasting 10 or 20 minutes) it is not possible to consider every permutation: risks have to be taken; objective truth has to be sacrificed to the time limits. Just like one-day cricket and Twenty20, both valid games and a test of skill but lacking that ultimate authenticity, the sense that here we have a definitive struggle which will establish the better player.
Happily, classical chess – the long form of the game – still rules the roost. But in a concession to our self-defeating desire for life to be speeded up, world championships are shorter than they used to be: last year’s world title match between Vishy Anand and Vladimir Kramnik was played over 12 games, half as long as the matches of a generation ago. Still a reasonable test of the players’ strengths, and Anand emerged a worthy winner, but longer is better. Though perhaps not as long as the Karpov-Kasparov match of 1984-85 – the chess equivalent of the Timeless Test – which was abandoned after six months with Karpov claiming exhaustion.
A line has to be drawn somewhere: prizefighting over an unlimited number of rounds is clearly a bad thing, and a chess match without clocks (I know one player, an ultra-Frindallian, who refuses to use them) is likely to drag on forever. But too often these days, not just in cricket and chess but in many other sports, the line is drawn on the side of what TV or sponsors want rather than what the sport requires; what is convenient rather than what is authentic.
Other sports have their own afflictions. In football, the penalty shoot-out is an arbitrary way to end a match, with a weaker team able to play for penalties and thus produce both a boring game of football and, possibly, an unjust result. Similarly, in tennis the tie-break – while far more satisfactory than a penalty shoot-out – is also artificial, serving only to undermine the true rhythm of a match. How sad that we will never again witness an encounter such as that played at Wimbledon 40 years ago between Pancho Gonzales and Charlie Pasarell, which the former won 22-24, 1–6, 16-14, 6–3, 11-9 after more than five hours’ play. What tie-break, however dramatic, could match that?
Tennis is vulnerable to further tinkering, because schedulers loathe the unpredictable length of matches. Its scoring system is a thing of bizarre beauty – the way a single game, with numerous deuces, can last for 20 minutes, and one with four aces just a minute. That variety and expandability echo cricket, another game with retractable boundaries. By contrast, schedulers love football – a game of two entirely predictable halves – and want all other sports to mirror it. Hence their attempt to turn cricket into a glitzy spectacle that can be neatly fitted into three hours.
Sports are engaged in a Darwinian struggle for survival, and will do almost anything to win TV coverage and the interest of casual viewers. Hence cricket’s misguided attempt to become a different game – and hence, too, snooker’s current soul-searching over why the glory days of the 1980s, when pasty-faced men in waistcoats and bow-ties captivated an entire nation, have gone. Players and administrators can’t accept that snooker is an inherently technical game – not unlike chess in some ways – with a limited audience which, thanks to a combination of colour TV and mass unemployment, enjoyed a decade in the limelight and has now fallen back into billiards-like oblivion.
Snooker is the speedway de nos jours; sports wax and wane; it’s a fact of life. Attempts to “liven” it up – blindfold snooker, sudden-death matches, celebrity appearances by John Virgo – might cause a brief flicker of televisual interest, but ultimately they would kill the sport. These activities have survived because they have some inherent point that sustains interest, albeit perhaps only for a limited number of participants and spectators, and the length of a game, as sanctified over centuries, is often a necessary part of a sport’s meaning and search for resolution. So be it: these sports won’t change the world, but the world may seek to change them. And almost always for the worse.
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