Spotlight on Sport

Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words, it is war minus the shooting... there are quite enough real causes of trouble already, and we need not add to them by encouraging young men to kick each other on the shins amid the roars of infuriated spectators. George Orwell Unlike any other business, sports must preserve an illusion of perfect innocence. The mounting of this illusion defines the purpose and accounts for the immense wealth of sports. It is the ceremony of innocence that the fans pay to see — not the game or the match or the bout, but the ritual portrayal of a world in which time stops and all hope remains plausible, in which everybody present can recover the blameless expectations of a child, where the forces of light always triumph over the powers of darkness. Lewis H Lapham Cricket — a game which the English, not being a spiritual people, have invented in order to give themselves some conception of eternity. Lord Mancroft Many think life is a game; the English think cricket is a game. George Mikes