With the football World Cup going on in Russia, everything else in the domain of global sports seems to carry little value. Such is the aura and allure of the event that it is hard to focus one’s energies on anything else.
In terms of cricket, the Sri Lankans are having a troublesome time in the West Indies. The Australians are having even more troublesome times in England. And while nothing is happening in Pakistan, Umar Akmal is doing his best to make himself relevant even if it entails shooting himself in the foot by talking of unreported incidents of approaches made by the bookies a few years earlier.
On another front, the last edition of the once hallowed hockey Champions Trophy is under way in the Netherlands where Pakistan, though ranked 13th and with no other qualification criterion at their disposal, is a guest participant for having been the nation that had floated and executed the idea back in the late 1970s. The other teams are not being honourable ‘hosts’ for they are treating the ‘guests’ rather dismissively.
There is a running thread that links football, hockey and cricket on the global stage. If you live in the past, you are no good in the present. And without a present, you have no future
Each of these elements could have attracted a comment or two — especially the utterances of our beloved Akmal — but let’s leave them all for some other time. Let’s enjoy the frenzy that football creates every four years. The ongoing event in Russia is one of the most exciting such events in the last couple of decades at least in terms of scorelines. After two of the three phases in the group stage, there was not a single goal-less encounter. When there was nothing happening in the field, someone or the other came up with a stunning free kick or a VAR-assisted spot kick. And when that also didn’t work, someone or the other decided to score an own goal, as if, to keep the 0-0 score line at bay. There were five own goals in just the first phase and there was enough reason at that stage to keep an eye on not just the highest goal-scorer, but also on the highest own-goal-scorer!
The South Americans used to play football much like the Asians played their hockey; open, attacking and with a flair of their own that had dribble and body-dodges at its core. The Europeans changed it all with technical finesse, short passes, formations and clusters. The position that sides like Brazil and Argentina had in the days gone by came under stress and they struggled to be what they had become used to. Who can forget the embarrassment suffered by Brazil at the last edition of the World Cup when the game was practically over in the first 20 minutes? And the Argentinean struggles in the current edition make for agonising viewing.
What happened in hockey is pretty much the same. The Asian flair of yore has no place in an era of technical finesse and health fitness. And that is where Pakistan’s lingering woes have their origin. The South Koreans were the first Asian outfit to change the game with a strategy that had speed as its cornerstone. But the Europeans caught them soon enough and that was the end of that strategy. Of late, in the last three, four years, India has made decent attempts at reviving its fortunes by modifying the way the game is approached in the land. The most recent 4-0 thrashing of Pakistan at the Champions Trophy was just a continuation of a string of similar scorelines between the teams in recent times. One team is adapting on a consistent basis and reaping the rewards. The other’s efforts are marked by fits and starts with matching results.
In terms of cricket, the South American model was seen at its best in the West Indian side under Clive Lloyd. Batting, fielding or bowling, they were in the attacking mode all the time. They were relentlessly offensive in their approach to the game and all that made for wonderful viewing. But it lasted a decade and no more. By the time the other sides made their adjustments, the West Indians were past their peak and were suffering from a lack of human resources. The slide began and they have yet to recover.
The thread running through the three sports is the changing scenario and one’s ability to keep pace with the times. If you can’t do that, you belong to the past, not the present. And it is just about impossible to be part of the future without being a part of the present. In another domain away from sports, we can see the other side of the equation; that people, teams and nations can still be a part of the future when they are a part of the present, but they have no interaction with the past. China did it in information technology. Without having any exposure to mainframes and desktops, it started with the laptop and is today every inch a part of the future.
But a direct jump from the past to the future is hard to imagine. West Indian cricket and Pakistan hockey are struggling on that very count. What Brazil suffered in 2014 and what Argentina is going through in Russia are no different. Lionel Messi may well be a great in his own right, but in a team game everyone has to carry their own weight. His magic touch may still do a few things right, but if that is the sole team plan, it won’t work for long. The game, any game, is much larger than the individual, any individual.
Published in Dawn, EOS, July 1st, 2018
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