This is something I experienced first-hand while serving as a young army officer on the Line of Control (LoC) between India and Pakistan in the early years of the millennium. At worst, it corrupts it.” And “it is not just the players who are corrupted. In a popular BBC podcast prior to the London Olympics, Dominic Hobson made a provocative counterpoint about sport and spectators: “Sport does not build character.
The self-image of the spectators of any sport can, however, be misleading. But if you were to do a survey, all these categories of fans would hold forth on the aesthetics of sport, its beauty and appreciate the artistry of a player, as you would do of any master in a creative field. Former England cricketer-turned-author Ed Smith has identified various types of fans: those who love the expectation more than the match some who revel in spectacle and sense of theatre others more detached imagining themselves as the manager or captain more common, he says, is a fan who watches the match like a reader gripped by the narrative of a novel, simply wondering what happens next. “There cannot be much doubt that the whole thing is bound up with the rise of nationalism - that is, with the lunatic modern habit of identifying oneself with large power units and seeing everything in terms of competitive prestige,” the author wrote in a damning treatise titled The Sporting Spirit (1945), which was written after a visit by the USSR football team to the UK.īut Orwell, perhaps, mistook the most vocal and aggressive sports follower, who is seeking a group identity, to be the only type of fan.
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