SPORT is always associated with fanaticism. People who like sports are called fans and their fanaticism is thought to be the very essence of sport.
The conventional idea of the sports fan is a person, usually male, in face-paint, clad in a replica shirt, cloaked in the flag of his country, making a terrible din.
Does this person embody the very essence of sport? Is he typical of what sport demands? Or is he, in fact, an exception, an aberration, someone who hasn’t really got the point?
I wondered about this as I made my way to the Brit Oval yesterday morning; it has been a while since I was last in London.
And, obviously enough, I found that the shadow of terrorism was cast over the place. You can’t avoid it. At the Tube station, notices tell you that your baggage must be available for search at any time. At the railway station, notices told you that if you were hoping to catch a plane then (a) poor you and (b) you’ve probably missed it already.
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Life in the capital cannot, it seems, continue without constant reference to the tensions between Muslims and Britain — the threat of the terrorist, the fanatic who is prepared to die for a moment or an eternity of glory. I went on, then, to attend a contest between a bunch of men representing England, officially a Christian country, and Pakistan, officially a Muslim country.
Had you come with me to look for fanaticism, you would have looked in vain. It was merely a day of very decent sport, and that, it seems, is something completely different. It was intense, yes, and powerful and it was full of high feelings and effort and excitement and disappointment. But neither the players nor the crowd exhibited any hint of fanaticism.
That is to say, nobody placed a disproportionate level of importance on the occasion. The fact is that a bunch of English people and a bunch of Muslims can meet on a patch of grass and duel without bloodshed, hatred and dishonour, and that people, no matter what their nationality, racial origin or religion, can watch them without feeling that they are watching a contest between good and evil, between God and godlessness, between righteousness and moral decay.
No one wanted fanaticism here. What we all wanted was a nice day out and a thrilling contest between bat and ball. We got that all right.
Mohammad Asif took two wickets in two balls, got a round of applause from the section of the ground where he went to field and, when he was shifted 50 yards, another from the new section. Good sport.
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It was Pakistan’s day and if the England supporters were disappointed, they didn’t seek to assault the opposition in revenge. And across the country, as people watched on television or listened to the radio, the match was enjoyed in a way that was — almost certainly — cheerful, enthusiastic, appreciative and utterly without fanaticism.
Most people enjoy most sport in this way. The people who go to football matches and sing songs of hate are exceptional. Sport is, in the main, a merry thing, a cheerful thing, a frivolous thing that needs to be taken with exactly the right amount of seriousness. Too much seriousness or too little — both make sport pointless.
Terrorism is a business that depends on fanaticism. Sport is the business of people who are just the opposite. Yesterday, sporting people revelled in a good contest between Pakistan and an England team who included a British-born Muslim, Saj Mahmood. The adoption of his abbreviated name — Saj instead of Sajid — demonstrates that sporting people see nothing at all odd in this.
Of course, there are exceptions. Some people called Mahmood a traitor in the previous Test match. But these people, like the flag-cloaked, face-painted figure posing for photographs, are not part of sport’s mainstream. Sport is, in the main, benign, cheerful, optimistic and it is performed all over the world for the quiet pleasure of millions.
London lives in fear and the most desperate inconvenience because of fanatics, but there was no fanaticism to be found when the team from the decadent West met the team from Muslim heartlands in mock battle in London yesterday.