George Bernard Shaw Needs to be Brought up to Speed

                                                    George Bernard Shaw Needs to be Brought up to Speed

I came to hear about G. B. Shaw through his play Pygmalion when I was in my mid-teens. Then one of the things he said made me laugh, though thinking about it now, I feel silly. He is supposed to have said, “11 players are playing and 11000 fools are watching,” while commenting on the game of cricket.

Facts firs: there are 13 players on the field, 11 players on the bowling-cum-fielding side and two on the batting side. In fact, I am in a good mood to add two more to the population on the field though not players, the field umpires. Add the TV referee, though not on the field but has to be counted among the fools. In addition, there is also the match referee, off the field. Therefore, 13 players and two referees on the field, and besides the number of commentators in the commentary booth, the TV Umpire and the match referee, XXXXX + 3 + 2 who are watching. The number of fools just shot up, because no international cricket match has as low a turnout as 11,000, even the one between Ireland and Afghanistan. XXXXX, the stadium spectator capacity (including the freebies) may go as high as 132,000+ at NaMo stadium in Ahmedabad.

That is a whole lot of catching up that GBS has to do. Let us zoom out and see how people respond to other sports.

G. B. Shaw must have never played any sport. He could not have even imagined how a sport helps one in living, beyond surviving. Sport without passion is no sport at all. 

Even street cricket is played with passion, and not merely in India. Pick-up games in the US are one of the most intense leisure (an oxymoron I invented!) activities of Americans−if you had seen the movie Thomas Crown Affair starring Pierce Brosnan, you would have noticed that the obscenely rich Thomas Crown blew $100,000 on a golf hole on a Saturday afternoon! Tell Americans that such games are not played with a passion for competition and life.

I have seen professional and college sports−Basketball, American Football, Baseball−in the US, competitions (domestic) in India, indeed inter- and intra-hostel sports competitions. To this day, I have not witnessed even any sport being played or spectated without passion. It is passion, indeed, that can bring 11,000 fools to watch 11 players play.

I measure only 156 cm tall, yet none has enjoyed inter-collegiate sports in basketball and volleyball with more passion than what I show, merely spectating.

If George Bernard Shaw would read this wherever he may be, he would know that he still has much to learn.

Raghuram Ekambaram