Draw a veil over need for winners or losers
When the Lions shared spoils with the All Blacks, it did not devalue a great sporting spectacle, writes It is no bad thing to be reminded, every so often, about the virtue of parity
Ihave an idea. Whenever Wimbledon comes along, you hear the same tired debate about whether women and men should get the same prize money despite playing over different formats. “Women should play best of five sets!” the men cry. “Men should play best of three!” women respond. “Men are effectively getting paid less for doing the same amount of work!” men howl in outrage. “Welcome to the rest of society!” the women counter with equal vehemence.
Enough. Time to settle this. A new format across both genders, across all forms of tennis: best of four sets.
The ideal compromise. Not only would it end this whole prattle-of-thesexes once and for all, but you would scarcely notice the difference. In the first three rounds of this year’s Wimbledon, only 15 men’s singles matches – 13 per cent – went the full distance. At the recent French Open, it was 14 per cent. There is no reason to suspect it would be any different for the women.
Aha, you point out, but what if a match finishes two sets all? Well, nothing. Honours even, shake hands at the net, savour the satisfaction of a hard-fought battle and live to fight another day. At which point, it is probably time to admit that while my grand idea has a theoretical neatness, in practice, fine tuning may yet be required.
Still, it brings us to the wider issue: the idea of winners and losers in sport, and what happens when you have neither. It is an issue brought into focus, of course, by the magnificent conclusion to the recent Lions series in New Zealand. In the wake of the 15-15 draw in the third Test, a curious emotional void began to coagulate, one neither side found particularly satisfying. “Weird,” was Owen Farrell’s reaction. All Blacks captain Kieran Read described the feeling as “pretty hollow”. Almost immediately, a clamour went up for the deadlock to be broken somehow. Anyhow. Extra time. Golden point. Place kicks. A shoe-throwing contest between Steve Hansen and Warren Gatland. It was even suggested that the Barbarians v All Blacks fixture in November could be designated a sort of proxy fourth Test.
At which point, it is probably worth asking: why? Why must someone always win and someone lose? Or, to put it another way: what would have been gained from a contrived decider? Would it have made one of the greatest series of all time any greater? Would it have rendered Sam Warburton’s ruck-clearing or Jonathan Davies’s last-ditch defending any more heroic?
Of course not. Quite the contrary, in fact. Which is why sometimes, the draw is the greatest result of them all. In other sports – football and Test cricket being the two most obvious examples – it is built into the emotional hymn book. The draw is the ultimate measure of shared sacrifice, shared talent, shared honour.
And perhaps there is even a broader lesson to be learned here, in a world that increasingly demands black and white certainties, even as such certainties become harder, not easier, to attain. A world of firm borders and hardened opinions, of unquestionable truths and snivelling lies, of good and evil and nothing in between.
People like sport because it tells them exactly how to feel. But maybe it is no bad thing to be reminded, every so often, about the virtue of parity. Of ambiguity. Of shades of grey, of competing narratives, of the concept that sometimes, in sport as in life, the glory – and the futility – is not in the result but in the journey.
After all, we come from nothing and return to the very same. Life, in its strange way, is a drawn Test series.