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What sport tells us about life This extract is taken from a book by writer and former cricketer Ed Smith, in which he investigates the sociology and psychology of sport. 5 10 15 20 25 30 What kind of fan are you? Have you paid a small fortune to be one of 76,000 watching Manchester United at Old Trafford? Or are you a loyal supporter of a tiny team, a bigger cog in an infinitely smaller wheel? Perhaps you are nervously hiding behind a tree, hoping not to convey your anxiety to your already panicky son as he gets marooned on 99 in a school cricket match. What are you doing here? Take your eyes off the pitch for a moment and look around. Glance at the rows of people, whether they are sitting on the recreation park bench or in an international stadium – some may have planned this moment as the centrepiece of their month, others may merely be distracting themselves to avoid weekend boredom. How can one activity – sport – unite such disparate strands of humanity? What on earth have they come to find? We imagine it is straightforward: everyone sees the same match, even through different eyes. But, in truth, we all have a unique 'take' on sport that means we experience it in an individual way. Perspective is everything. There is much talk in the sports world about 'experts' and 'mere fans; as though there is an inner caste of privileged insiders who know what is going on. It isn't true. Sports fans of limited knowledge but acute perceptiveness sometimes have far deeper insights about the game than people who are unhealthily obsessed. The difference between an 'expert' and a 'mere fan' revolves around knowledge – who knows the most. But many of the characteristics which really separate sports fans have nothing to do with degrees of learning. Instead, they derive from differences in temperament. It is temperament that determines how you watch sport, what you see as you do so, which parts of your personality the stuff reaches, how deep it goes and why you come back for more. One of sport's wonders is the breadth of its support. I use breadth carefully, not meaning simply that lots of people like it – the popularity of sport is well known. Instead I mean the coming together of diametrically differing types of people, all glued to the same pitch or television screen. Some fans love the expectation more than the match itself. Others revel in the spectacle and the sense of theatre. To many supporters, sport is about belonging – to a team, a club or a community of fans. A different type is more detached, imagining himself as the manager or captain, looking down on the melee and searching for the right strategy. More common, I expect, is the fan who watches the match like a reader gripped by the narrative of a novel, simply wondering what will happen next. But there is another huge category of fan: people who just love a bloody good argument. Sport gets them there. It makes them think, engage and argue. Sport stimulates and challenges. It provokes them. We know that playing sport is pugilistic; perhaps following sport can be as well.

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  • What sport tells us about life

    This extract is taken from a book by writer and former cricketer Ed Smith, in which he investigates

    the sociology and psychology of sport.

    5

    10

    15

    20

    25

    30

    What kind of fan are you?

    Have you paid a small fortune to be one of 76,000 watching Manchester United at Old Trafford?

    Or are you a loyal supporter of a tiny team, a bigger cog in an infinitely smaller wheel? Perhaps

    you are nervously hiding behind a tree, hoping not to convey your anxiety to your already

    panicky son as he gets marooned on 99 in a school cricket match.

    What are you doing here? Take your eyes off the pitch for a moment and look around. Glance at

    the rows of people, whether they are sitting on the recreation park bench or in an international

    stadium some may have planned this moment as the centrepiece of their month, others may

    merely be distracting themselves to avoid weekend boredom. How can one activity sport

    unite such disparate strands of humanity? What on earth have they come to find?

    We imagine it is straightforward: everyone sees the same match, even through different eyes.

    But, in truth, we all have a unique 'take' on sport that means we experience it in an individual way.

    Perspective is everything.

    There is much talk in the sports world about 'experts' and 'mere fans; as though there is an

    inner caste of privileged insiders who know what is going on. It isn't true. Sports fans of limited

    knowledge but acute perceptiveness sometimes have far deeper insights about the game than

    people who are unhealthily obsessed.

    The difference between an 'expert' and a 'mere fan' revolves around knowledge who knows the

    most. But many of the characteristics which really separate sports fans have nothing to do with

    degrees of learning. Instead, they derive from differences in temperament. It is temperament that

    determines how you watch sport, what you see as you do so, which parts of your personality the

    stuff reaches, how deep it goes and why you come back for more.

    One of sport's wonders is the breadth of its support. I use breadth carefully, not meaning simply

    that lots of people like it the popularity of sport is well known. Instead I mean the coming

    together of diametrically differing types of people, all glued to the same pitch or television

    screen. Some fans love the expectation more than the match itself. Others revel in the spectacle

    and the sense of theatre. To many supporters, sport is about belonging to a team, a club or

    a community of fans. A different type is more detached, imagining himself as the manager

    or captain, looking down on the melee and searching for the right strategy. More common, I

    expect, is the fan who watches the match like a reader gripped by the narrative of a novel, simply

    wondering what will happen next.

    But there is another huge category of fan: people who just love a bloody good argument. Sport

    gets them there. It makes them think, engage and argue. Sport stimulates and challenges. It

    provokes them. We know that playing sport is pugilistic; perhaps following sport can be as well.

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    Sports fans argue about anything and everything. Is too much money bad for sport? Given

    they've got all these damned statistics, why do they keep picking the wrong team? If the

    standard of sport is improving, why do today's players seem less good than yesterday's giants?

    What part does luck play in top-class sport?

    Unravel the ideas behind the arguments in those few sentences and you will find questions

    about evolution, destiny, psychology, the free market, history and many other disciplines.

    That might sound daunting, but it should be liberating. Sport can be enjoyed at lots of different

    levels just like music, literature or art. You don't have to take an intellectual or analytical

    approach to love it. If you turn the pages of the novel simply to find out what happens next you

    are still getting your money's worth. But potentially there is also a deeper level of enjoyment.

    So it is with sport. I am not arguing that you should care more about sport in the conventional

    sense of sitting even longer with your head in your hands while your team crashes to defeat. In

    many ways we already take it more than earnestly enough. But given that people already take

    sport so very seriously, and at such an intense level of enquiry, then we might as well draw out

    some of sport's intellectual lessons and practical uses while we're arguing about it. Sport, I think, is

    a huge and mostly unused analytical resource.

    Sport has a rich conceptual framework, if only we would open our eyes to it. If you want to prove

    how much luck intervenes in our history, sport is the perfect place to start the enquiry. If you

    want to know how to change an institution, sport has great examples. Sport pits nature against

    nurture and lets us all watch and take sides. If you wonder about the limits of objectivity, sport

    raises the question of the relationship between facts and opinion. Sport invites nostalgia about a

    mythic golden age, then mocks it by holding up a stopwatch that shows ever-improving world-

    record times.

    We see what we want to see when we watch sport. The angry fan finds tribal belonging; the

    pessimist sees steady decline and fall; the optimist hails progress in each innovation; the

    sympathetic soul feels every blow and disappointment; the rationalist wonders how the haze of

    illogical thinking endures.

    From the players and the fans to the institutions and the record books, sport is full of prejudices,

    perspectives and historical changes the unavoidable stuff of life. Sport is a condensed version of

    life only it matters less and comes up with better statistics.

    Adapted from What Sport Tells Us About Life, by Ed Smith.