JACK & SPADES: Sports

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On Why We Prefer Someone Over The Other [Sports]

EUREKA! Yes, for I have made a discovery! I have finally figured out the intricacies of what drives people to follow sports personalities. This goes back down to our upbringing, our society and it’s conventions and ethics. Ok, I might get abstract now, so let me make it easier for you:

Conjure up a scenario, suppose you are watching a game of football between two imperfectly balanced teams. One of them, the undisputed champions for the past 5 years, with the best coach and staff, the best of the sponsors and enormous following.The other, a minnow, new to the game, with little to no support (financial and otherwise) but abundant in talent. Now the minnows are giving the champions a hard time, making them earn that victory, pushing themselves to their limit, relentlessly striving hard and not giving up or succumbing to the pressure.

Suppose you are new to the game. Who would you (as a neutral) support? Whose win would pump up your adrenalin more? Whose loss would make your heart go down the sulking path? Definitely, the minnows. And it’s obvious. All through our childhood, we have been taught to appreciate the one trying to learn, the one who needs encouragement. We ourselves have actually learned most of the things that we do because of the support and encouragement that was given to us when we were amateurs and trying. And hence it’s an upbringing technique that we cultivate within ourselves too.

Now, coming back to sports and sporting personalities. The reason we choose to support someone over the other is the same as explained above. When someone with the capability of bringing about a change on the lines of ending the reign of superiority of someone, emerges all of a sudden, we like that someone. And there are two reasons for this behavior:

1. When the entire world knows what is going to happen (or who is going to win), there is no excitement, no anticipation. We prefer to see a turnaround or upset that no one predicted not because we have anything against the current best player or that he does not deserve to win. It’ because we all love upsets, turnarounds and surprises. They spice up our lives and makes it more interesting and that is the whole purpose of watching sports, isn’t it? To make our life interesting.

2. Secondly, an upset would catch everyone’s attention, take everyone by surprise and if you are the one who predicted it, or someone who supported the minnow, you will catch everyone’s attention. People would look up to you as someone with a great insight of the game and admire your perception and judgement. That’s what who we all are, ‘attention seeking, selfish bastards’. The bottom line is, we as humans are born selfish and who we support in sports just gratifies the selfishness within us.

So, if I support Roger Federer in Tennis, it’s because when I started watching the game, it was dominated by personalities like Pete Samprass and Andre Agassi. And Federer came out of the blue and took everyone by surprise with his talent and this caught my eye. The same goes for people who started following the game when Federer was at his best and Nadal emerged as someone with the potential to eventually defeat him. Hence followership is dictated simply on the basis of when did someone genuinely started following the game, it’s as simple as that.

This is a fact, no matter how incongruous it may appear at first, but deep down, knowingly or unknowingly our preferences in sports have developed on the above stated basis. If not, then you are not really a fan of the game and simply project yourself as one to get acceptance within the society (which looks down upon people who do not watch a sport) and blindly (and faking-ly) support someone your friends or others around you support.

Finally a FIFA post!

Since almost every soul alive on the face of the earth I know, knows that the FIFA World Cup is going on. And I was desperately thinking about something to post related to this, but couldn’t somehow find anything interesting enough or something “not-talked/heard-about” yet.

And I have definitely decided that from now on, I am never going to write my predictions about the results of any sporting event ever again after the disastrous result of my last attempt :@ MY FRENCH DELIGHT (French open). This I say, not only because I think not even a single soul read it. But also because making predictions about each and every stage of the tournament, with explanations and reasoning takes a hell of a lot of effort and actual study (of records, recent form of the players, statistics etc. etc) Now even the effort part is not my reason of angst. What actually gets on my nerves is the fact that even after all this endeavor on your part, by the end of the tournament, you realize how one single player can change the face of a competition upside down, one wild card entry or one wrong move by your favorite and the championship is lost. What you are left with is your blog, which has a post whose predictions appear to have been made by the most ignorant of followers imaginable. Actually my predictions were as close to the actual results as I am close to becoming 7ft tall.

Coming back to FIFA… I had almost decided to give the World Cup post a miss (coz of my lack of ability to find anything worthwhile), but then, I stumbled upon this pic …

I thought I’d post this awesome ad for Louis Vuitton featuring football’s three retired greats – Zidane, Pele, and Maradona.

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Photographed by Annie Leibovitz

I so love the concept. Three football greats bent over a game of foosball. Isn’t that so cool? The product is left in the background so I don’t know how successful an advertisement this is. But I love the image :D, and Zidane certainly looks fit enough to go for another World Cup or two.

My French Delight

The divine Mr. Federer and the delightful Ms Kuznetsova have done their bit by picking out the draws for the women’s and men’s fields at the French Open .The defending champions are, by an amusing little tradition, given the honor of drawing lots to decide the arrangement of the players on the draw sheet (I bet you didn’t knew that). So .. it’s time for inconsequential first-time analysts like me to do what we do best(actually I didn’t have anything better to do) – making hair-brained predictions about the possible results and, invariably, ending up with egg on our faces for picking players who, in hindsight, could only have been picked by the most ignorant of tennis followers imaginable. Without any further ado, I’ll bite right into the highly scientific art of “bracketology”. Here are my picks, I am merely expecting these results and not predicting ‘em, for this year’s French Open.

Starting with the women’s draw (save the best for the last) :

The first quarter has the top seed Serena Williams, Ms Consistency (in this season, at least) along-side former No. 1 Maria Sharapova. Gosh !!! Good looks don’t work in the sporting arena, they get you unwanted attention when you are at your best and then distract your mind off to other not-so-important domains. What else will explain what happened with Anna Ivanovich?? (my crush on her still continues though)
If one were to go by claycourt pedigree, the only name that matters is that of the erstwhile Queen of Clay Justine Henin. She’s slated to meet Sharapova in the 3rd round…..that’s what I heard in the news. What else I heard, was the term ‘cow on ice’ -> made famous back in 2007 by Sharapova when referring to her movement on clay). A Henin-Serena quarterfinal looks like a tantalizing prospect, remember Henin has had a comeback whereas Serena’s been the perpetual element in the tennis arena, so the clash isn’t going to be a one-sided affair, but since it’s a women’s battle I would like to go with someone who is nearer in shape to be qualified as a women.(no offence intended).
Prediction: Henin def. Serena

The second quarter doesn’t hold much surprises or so it looks, just a few hiccups expected with Dinara Safina and Ana Ivanovic in the path of Jelena Jankovic, who seems in tremendous form lately.

The third quarter is filled up with players I have little idea about. Svetlana Kuznetsova petted against some fresh new talent? You never really know… one bad service game and the defending champion might be out of reckoning, so I randomly choose 14th seed Flavia Pennetta to reach her maiden grand slam semifinal.

The fourth quarter seems like the veteran’s day out with Venus, Elena Dementieva, Nadia Petrova and a few others in their late 20’s, which makes one wonder whether fate has handed them some kind of last-woman-standing battle to attain nirvana. Nonetheless it is awfully difficult to pick up a winner here, but I’ll go with the traditional big-gun Venus, even though on a non-grass surface, reaching the semis’ is something she’s done only once in the last 7 years? Bracketology just got a whole lot more unscientific.

SEMI FINAL 1: Jankovic vs HeninI may live to regret this, but I’m going to go with Jankovic here. She’s proven that she can defeat Serena and Venus back-to-back. Who’s to say she can’t frustrate the daylights out of the Queen of Clay too ?

SEMIFINAL 2: Venus vs PennettaEnd of party for Pennetta, Venus is too old in the game to let this one slip from her hand.

FINAL : Venus vs JankovichThe seasoned campaigner has, of late, shown signs of losing steam right at the final hurdle, and I see no alterations and reasons as to why it might not happen again, after-all you can’t hold back signs of ageing unless you use “OLAY – total effect” (bad joke ?… damn these ads). Henceforth..... CONGRATULATIONS Jankovich on your maiden grand slam title.

Time for some men’s action :

It’ll be a short one though… for all I know and believe: Come what may in the path of destruction, there never was, nor will ever be, anyone to match the greatness of Mr. Federer. So all you Nadal’s, the Murray’s, the Roddick’s , Potro’s, the Tsonga’s and the like can pray and fight for a final’s berth in Centercourt but your dream run will be cut short just till there … ‘cause there’s no stopping Federer, not just yet. So for all those who say Federer’s flame has lost some intensity, can very well go and buy some extinguisher, which they might need when they are being turned into ashes by his supreme and yet unparalleled strokeplay.