The glory of sport

Love of sport is woven into the fabric of my life. In my close family there were outstanding sportsmen so ever since I was very young I heard about sport and was informed about the history and heroes of cricket, football, tennis, athletics and all the rest and was encouraged to participate myself. It did not seem to me then that life could be fully lived without a love of games and it is no different now that I am 88.

For a long time I loved the physical, adrenalin-rush of playing to win for self and country. For nearly fifty years I played tennis and then squash competitively – years containing a wealth of pain and glory, nerve-wracking tension and pure joy, despair and excitement, fun and disappointment also.

And many good times there was the sheer animal delight in performing at the top of the body’s welltrained form. Along the way there have been friendships I shall always cherish, rivalries I shall never forget, matches that are vivid still, victories that fizzed like popped champagne, defeats that felt sour in the throat for days. As long as the memory banks still light up there will come back to me that strange, compelling feeling, a mixture of fear and exhilaration, that rises through one’s whole being just before walking onto court before a vital match. And there are memories that will never fade of perfected action. Until I die perhaps I will vividly remember that high back-hand volley I executed with perfect timing that sped for a winner into the top left hand corner of the baseline in a match against Darnley Scandella on Court No. 3 at the Tranquility Square Tennis Club on Victoria Avenue in Port-of-Spain one bright afternoon more than 70 years ago.

And when I became just a spectator my avid interest did not wane. The endeavours of others on the courts and fields of play have salted and sweetened life. It has not really mattered that the advent of big money and pure professionalism has made games more ugly and less carefree and enjoyable. People competing in cut-throat business do not behave like people playing a game in the dictionary-original sense. Despite this caveat, despite the ugliness growing in too much of sport these days, there is more than enough heart-warming and mind-delighting excellence still to be experienced in playing and watching any game with men and women performing to the limits of their potential. Time and time again games still catch fire and then they inspire what I can only call a reverence for the holy spirit of man creating beauty under the eye of an approving God. And if that sounds overblown then I can only say that it is not far from what C.L.R. James in the greatest book ever written about any sport, Beyond a Boundary, writes when he entitles a whole chapter on the subject What Is Art? and muses that cricket, at least, belongs with the theatre, ballet, opera and dance as an art form, and clearly states his conviction that aestheticians who have scorned to take notice of popular sports and games have been utterly wrong:

The popular democracy of Greece, sitting for days in the sun watching the Oresteia; the popular democracy of our day, sitting similarly, watching Miller and Lindwall bowl at Hutton and Compton – each in its own way grasps at a more complete human existence. We may some day be able to answer Tolstoy’s exasperated and exasperating question: What is art? – but only when we learn to integrate our vision of Walcott on the back foot through the covers with the outstretched arm of the Olympic Apollo.

Something else. Over all these years I have been particularly attracted by intensity of feeling and effort in sport, the passion which bursts out in its greatest moments, the heart-beating tension when results hang by a thread, the absolute commitment which rises to the level of devotion to a cause that for the moment matters more than life and death.

I once read a review of the life and work of William Hazlitt, early 19th century English essayist. Among other things he was the first and one of the greatest writers on sport. He himself was a first-rate sportsman and passion for the game welled up in him. He boxed very well. He played fives and, it is reported, “his sighs, groans, lamentations left no doubt he was becoming warm in the spirit of the game.” A friend recalled him (like Mc Enroe?), “fling his racket to the other end of the court, walk deliberately to the centre, with uplifted hands imprecate the most fearful curses on his head for his stupidity, and then rush to the side wall and literally dash his head against it.” His editor remarked, “There was not a particle of energy about him… But when he kindled, a flush spread over his sunken cheeks, his eyes lighted up wildly, his chest expanded, he looked like one inspired, his motions were eloquent, and his whole form partook of the enthusiasm.”

Kindled. Good word for sport and sportsmen when they blaze up in a sort of glory.