Sporting Insights -1
A Sport in Which Left-handers are banned…, May 6, 2024
Imagine Cricket without Gary Sobers, David Gover, Saurav Ganguly or Wasim Akram, likewise tennis without Rod Laver, Rafael Nadal, or Martina Navratilova, or for that matter any other game without left-handers. The sport would lose half its charm. But there is a sport in which left-handers are banned, because they have an unfair advantage. The sport is Jai Alai.
Jai Alai is a sport similar to squash played in a court with a wall in the front, back and left side, BUT without a wall on the right side of the court. Due to this feature, players of Jai Alai are permitted to only play with their right-hand. Left-handed players are banned, for they gain an unfair advantage as the spin of the ball will take it out of the court thereby placing right-handed players at a dis-advantage.
Sporting Insight-2
Love-all: Let the Play Begin, May 13, 2024
“Love-all”, the score at the start of a game in tennis or most other racquet sport like Table Tennis, Badminton or Squash, has multiple claims for its origin. The Scottish word luff, meaning nothing is one, another claim is of the way the French wrote zero on the score sheet, which was in an elliptical form and resembled an egg or l’oeuf in French. This claim finds support of similar use in cricket, where zero on the scoreboard for a batsman was called a duck’s egg and when a batsman was dismissed for without scoring a run he was said to have scored a duck.
A more interesting explanation for starting the game at love-all, comes from the need to distinguish professionals and amateurs playing the game. Where amateurs play the game, the game is said to start with the call of “love all” to indicate that they are not playing for money, but only for love, or should we add, for the love of the game. Reinforcing that love was used to indicate nothing, there are practices of English shopkeepers in 1736 CE, who encouraged their customer to look at their wares for free, calling out “See for love and buy for money”.
Sporting Insight -3
Children’s Game -Has Anything Changed in the Last 500 Years?, May 19, 2024
The Dutch artist Pieter Breughel in 1560 CE completed a painting titled “Children’s Games” that depicts more than 80 acts of children at play prevalent in 16th century Europe. The painting that is now exhibited in Vienna, Austria is not only arresting and attractive, but also comprehensive in its coverage. The activity covered in the painting is varied, with some simple activities that young children indulge in even today like playing with rattles, children playing in sand, blowing bubbles, and running with rolling hoops.
Turning to more mischievous act of young boys, it depicts a boy pulling the hair of another in the front, urinating, and stirring excrement with a stick. Covering a few activities of girl child, it shows pirouetting skirts of girls swirling around, girls playing with toys and games of mock weddings. Many of us today can identify ourselves with these children depicted in playing spinning tops, marbles, hide and seek, climbing trees, or balancing a stick on a finger.
On a precursory analysis I could find more than half the games depicted in it here are still in vogue today. What is your take?
Sporting Insights -4
Chess: How the Vazir became a Queen, May 27, 2024
An interesting question to ponder over is how the most powerful piece in chess is called the Queen considering that feminism is a twentieth century concept. The answer not surprisingly is that it was not always called Queen. Looking back to the place of origin of chess, early evidence for clearly suggests India, with a painting titled “Buzurgmihr Masters the Games of Chess” from the First Small Shahnama (Book of Kings) painted by Abu’l Qasim Firdausi in around 1300 CE. It depicts a game of chess played in the Persian court by the Persian Vizir and the dark-skinned Indian envoy on the left of the chess board.
The Indian/ Persian name for the chess pieces were Raja or Shah for the King, elephant for Bishop, horse or cavalry for Knight, and Rath or chariot for Rook. The most powerful piece of that time was called Senapati for General in India and Vizir for the minister in Persia. In an interesting book titled “Birth of the Chess Queen” the author Marilyn Yalom attributes the change in name from Vizir to Queen to the advent of powerful queens in the 15th century Europe, combined with the absence of an all-powerful minister. Even the word check-mate, is said to be derived from the word Shah-Mat, which means the King is frozen in Persian.
Viewed with a different lens, the Vazir to Queen is a move in Chess was much ahead of its time and foretold what would happen in the 20th and 21st century!
Playing Cards: How Ace Got its Apex Position, June 1, 2024
What mysteries can be hidden in a pack of playing cards, a pack of 52 cards, consisting of four suites of 13 cards each, with a jocker topping it?
While the origin of playing cards is traced to either India or China depending on which source you use, the advent of the 52 cards playing pack in its current form can be traced to the 18th century French Revolution. A rationale explaining the numbers has the 52 cards representing 52 weeks in a year, the four suites representing the four seasons of 13 weeks each, the 13 cards of a suite representing the 13 lunar months, and the colors of red and black, representing the day and night. The pack of cards explains much more, as the sum total of all numbers in a suite, i.e. 1+2+3….+12+13 equals 91 and the sum total of all the numbers in the four suites is 364, representing the number of days in a year, with the joker card being the addition day in the leap year.
The symbols are more revealing when we see that the Spades evolved from the lance or pike used by knights, the Hearts to represent clergy taken from scriptural expressions like “with the heart man believeth”, the pentacle became Diamond representing the merchants, and clover became Clubs representing the commoner at the bottom of society.
Connected ideologically closer to the French Revolution is the revised position of Ace or One, representing the laws of the land, which is placed on the top of the King, and hence occupying the apex position ahead of bringing even the royalty under the rule of law.
Sporting Insights -6,
A Dicey Issue: The Prime or Sevens! June 8, 2024
Dice and game of chance go hand-in-hand, and the dice comes in many forms. The most basic is the coin, which is a two-side dice, the three- side dice is longer but triangular in shape on the sides, the four-side dice is shaped as a cuboid, and the most popular form of dice is the six-side dice, shaped as a cube.
The placement of numbers on a dice can take multiple forms, with the three most common forms seen in human history, called the Sevens, Primes and the Turns or Rounds. In Sevens arrangement, 1 and 6, 2 and 7, 3 and 4, are placed on the opposite sides of the cube with the sum total of the three combinations being Seven. In Primes, the numbers are arranged with 1 and 2, 3 and 4, 5 and 6 being on opposite sides, and their sum total are 3, 7, and 11 respectively, with all the three being prime numbers. In the Turns or Round arrangement, 1,2,3 and 4 are on the four sides of the cube rotated clockwise and with 5 on the top and 6 at the bottom, the other two sides. This translates to 1 and 3, 2 and 4, 5 and 6 being on opposite sides.
In the last couple of centuries, the most popular form of number arrangement used in dice is Seven, as it averages out the scores by placing the extremes on either side thereby ensuring that even if the dice is not a perfect cube with its weight distributed equally the average scores will not deviate too much from a perfect dice.
Let the game begin, roll of the dice……
Sporting Insights -7
Rugby -An India Inspired Game?, June 8, 2024
Why is Rugby and American Football played with an elliptical shaped ball like device has intrigued me for long. Further, when I learnt that American Football derives its name because the “ball” is a foot long only added to the intrigue. Little did I realize that the answer to this riddle would be something close at home, literally speaking, within the home of most South Indians, a coconut!
Meitei Pangal, means literally coconut snatching in Manipuri and is the name of a game, which is also know by other names. The origin of this game is traced to the reenactment of snatching the pot of nectar, which is represented by a coconut, after the Samudra Manthan, i.e. churning of the ocean to get nectar, an event vividly described in the Hindu mythology. Yubi Lakpi, the other name for this game, is a seven a side traditional game played in Manipur, India using a coconut, which has many similarities to Rugby. The winner in this game is an individual, who carries the coconut from one end of the field and crosses the finish line drawn for this purpose on the other side of the field. He has to evade the opposing team members to reach his goal. A unique feature of this sport is that both the players and the coconut are smeared with mustard oil and water to make them slippery and easy to evade and slip away from their opponents hold. Players are not allowed to carry the “ball” against their chest and must carry it under their arm. Players cannot kick or punch their opponents, nor can they attack a player without the “ball”. An umpire is designated for the game who calls out fouls.
Emma Levine, an English author of unique Asian sports in her book “A Game of Polo with A Head-less Goat”, writes on the little know Indian sports and speculates “perhaps this was the root of modern rugby? Most Manipuris are quite adamant that the modern world stole the idea from them and made it into Rugby…”
Do you see any merit in their logic of Rugby originating from India?
Sporting Insights -8
Origin of Cricket: Can You See the 3 Stumps?, June 23, 2024
The predecessor for cricket could be a game of the 15th century that reveals the use of three stumps as wicket. This game was initially played by milkmaids in Sussex, England, using their three-legged milking stool for a wicket and their milk pail as bat. Called Stoolball, it was later on played by rural villagers and farm laborers in fields and local church yards when it was first documented in 1450 CE. Folklore has it that milk maids tired of bending over to defend a small stool could have put the stool atop the church “wicket gate”, thereby giving the stool legs the current name of wickets. Further, the seat of the milking stool could have been used as bat replacing the milk pail.
Stoolball is among the first of “striking and fielding ball game”, and is also called “cricket in the air”, as the “bowler” did not pitch the ball and threw it directly at the stool. Played during the Easter celebrations, it evolved more as a courtship pastime rather than a competitive sport, as it was one of the few games played by both men and women, in the spring-time. The game’s associations with romance was reinforced in a play written by William Shakespeare and the Sussex born playwright John Fletcher, the comedy, the Two Noble Kinsmen which used the phrase “playing stool ball” as a euphemism for courtship behavior.
From stoolball to cricket, derived from the Old English word ‘cricc’, which means crutch or staff that was used in the place of the modern-day bat, is a short but significant jump around the 16th century. Little did they know that this shift would transform this game into the current passion of Indian masses and the second most popular spectator sports in the world after football, the soccer type, and not the American or Australian game of the same name.
Sporting Insights -9
Amateurs: Players to Whom Winning Matters Less, July 3, 2024
The idea that a sports professional is one who plays for money is a relatively new concept. In the past, a sports professional did not always convey the same meaning. The ancient Greeks had one idea and the English of the 19th century had a very different concept.
The Greek city of Sparta had rigorous physical and mental training for war, initiated at the age of seven, making Spartans highly competitive in athletics and they accounted for about half the Olympic winners from the time ancient Olympics started in 776 to 600 BCE. Their dominance ended when other cities encouraged specialist athletes who trained full time for their events to compete against the Spartans. This resulted in the ancient Greek concept of a professional as a person dedicated full time to a specialized activity and trained for it.
The concept of amateur arose in England to ensure sporting events among the upper class remained competitive by eliminating professionals, who invariably came from the working class and could render the competition lopsided. An offshoot of this distinction was that amateurs were seen as playing the sport for honor and who valued fairness above winning, in the process introducing the concept of sportsman spirit in contrast to professionals who played to win. An anecdote from cricket of this period vividly illustrates it. When two batsman collided midwicket while going for a run, the ball reached the amateur bowler, who instead of breaking the wicket to effect runout called out to the professional fielding nearby to come and break the wicket, thereby he could uphold the spirit of sportsmanship, which was dear to the amateur!
Sporting Insights -10
When and How Football Become Safe for Children, July 11, 2024
In 1582 CE, Richard Mulcaster wrote a treatise on education titled Elementarie, with a longer title that explained its purpose as was the practice of that time, Positions Wherein Those Primitive Circumstances Be Examined, Which Are Necessarie for the Training up of Children. This book is a guide to teaching elementary education in English, at a time when language of education was predominantly Latin. It was a first in many ways, for not only was it comprehensive and spread over 45 chapters, it also contained the first dictionary and laid down the standard for spelling over 8000 words, in addition it covered both the mental and physical training required for children.
In chapter 27 of the book, titled “Of the Ball”, Mulcaster categorizes all ball games into three groups -the handball, the arm ball and the football. Under handball, he included all games played with bare hands played across the court, or against the wall like “tennis” which he mentioned by name, referring to royal tennis and not lawn tennis or tennis as we know it now, and highlights the health benefits of playing handball. Turning to arm ball, he mentions games played with the arm, and included games played by reinforcing the arm with wooden base for a shield. Turning to football, played with the feet, he highlights all the evils of the game of that time and suggest remedies to remove violence from it and make it useful for training the body.
Football of that time was primitive, involving a large number of players on either side, and associated with violence resulting in bursting of shines, breaking of legs and not suitable to train for health. Mulcaster then suggests the use of judge, introducing the concept of referee that we see today, to oversee the play and with authority to remove the inconveniences or violence, reducing the number of players on either side and introducing a designated position or standing for each of them, to help them use football for the benefit of the body as is the case with arm ball.
While injuries are still a part and parcel of football, credit for making it an exception and not the rule goes to Mulcaster which has made football the number one global spectator sports today and given us the chance to see the young Spanish teenager Lamine Yamal compete with grown men and win!
Sporting Insights -11
Snakes & Ladders: The Why’s of Climb Up and Sliding Down? July 22, 2024
My curiosity about the Snakes & Ladder game, to find why anyone would want to play a game of chance of moving up ladders and sliding down on snakes with no other aim than to reach the goal first, got me tracing its origin to find its source in a traditional Indian game of Moksha Patam, a fun way to explore the knowledge and wisdom of Vedic philosophy and Karma. This game was especially played on the night of Vaikunta Ekadashi, the day considered auspicious and revered by fasting, which required in addition to abstaining from food, also to abstain from sleep by staying awake the whole night, i.e. sleep fasting, as the gates of heaven are said to be open on this day. Hence, this game is also called Vaikuntapalli or the “Ladder to Salvation”.
While the use of ladder to rise up the hierarchy is very evident from its current use, the association of snake with sliding down is less apparent based on current practices. However, in Vedantic philosophy, Shankaracharaya uses the analogy of rope being mistaken for a snake with maya or illusion, which hampers understanding and pulls down an individuals’ progress away from their goal of salvation that can explain the use of snake for the downward slide.
There are many variants of this game, Gyan Chauper, the Game of Wisdom, used to teach Jain philosophy, the Tibetan Buddhist version Sag non rnam bzhags, meaning “Ascending the Spiritual Levels” and Shatranj al-‘urafa based on sufi philosophy, representing the pathway to union with God and the trappings of worldly life are some of the prominent ones. However, when the game moved to England, the board was shorn-off its philosophical elements and converted into a game of pure chance of Snakes & Ladders. Further, when the game moved to USA, the game was renamed as Chutes & Ladders, as they did not want children to be frightened by pictures of Snakes!
Sporting Insights -12
Excitement Created by Unpredictable Results: Creating a Level Playing Field, August 5, 2024
Nadal vs Federer in tennis, India vs Australia in cricket, Real Madrid vs Man City in football, brings out the feverish excitement in fans that starts prior to the game, continues through the match and lingers on long after the match has ended. One thing that underlines this excitement is the uncertainty of results. A game’s excitement is directly proportionate its unpredictable results. However, there is a game that makes every match, even the match between a novice and a champion unpredictable and exciting both to the players and the audience, i.e. the oldest ball game, Jue de Paume.
Jue de paume, the name in French meaning the palm game, which is called royal tennis in England, court tennis in the USA and courte paume in France. It is the predecessor to the current day Tennis, played indoors, and without racket. Initially played with bare hands, it evolved to the use of gloves worn on bare hands, and later to use of paddle like bats and finally rackets. Despite these changes, the game retained its original name of Jue de paume. The nature of game prioritises strategy and agility over pure brawn in deciding the winner and is seen as a combination of tennis, squash and chess.
This game has an intricate system of handicap that makes the game more competitive with the objective of giving both the players equal chance to win, be it the champ playing the novice by making them stretch to their full capacity. The complex handicap system has three distinct facets, one of placing the better players at a disadvantage by getting them to start with negative points, two of reducing the opportunities they have by giving them fewer serves, and three of restricting their options to play by not allowing them to play in certain parts of the court. Illustratively this in a cricket 20-20 match can translate to the better team having to score the required runs in lesser overs if they bat second, or bowl more overs to their opponents if they bat first, remove free hits for no-balls, and say remove the leg side strokes for scoring runs.
While handicaps do make the game exciting for novice by giving them an equal chance to win, I am not sure if the spectators enjoy it. For if they did, we would have seen this system of handicaps adopted in more sports, if not all of them.
Sporting Insights -13
Journey from a Cord to the Net, August 12, 2024
When games get competitive and high stakes are involved, it is normal to have disputes resulting from different perspectives, or due to tight calls. These calls often decide the winner or tilt the path to victory for one at the cost of the other. The advent of neutral parties: stationary umpires in games like tennis and cricket, or the mobile referee in football and hockey was the first step to resolve these disputes arising from different perspectives by having a neutral eye.
However, for tight calls that can deceive even the naked eye of the neutral umpire or referee, DRS the acronym for Decision Review System, where video replays are used to verify the contested or disputed decisions. Much before the advent of video replays, simple technology was used to prevent disputes; and among the first such technology used in ball games was the net, initially in court games like lawn tennis as tennis was then called, or table tennis or badminton, and later in field games like football and hockey.
Initial ball games like Jue de Paume in French for royal tennis, as the predecessor to lawn tennis was called was played by the contestants hitting the ball against a wall similar to squash that we see today. As it evolved, this game seems to have morphed to the Italian version of palla dela corda, the name describing a game played over a cord where the opponents stood on the opposing sides of a court, separated by a cord. It is logical to assume that disputes would have arisen on whether the ball went over the cord or under the cord. The easiest way to resolve this dispute is to cover the portion below the cord to prevent the ball from crossing over to the other side of the court. To ensure the game is not hampered in resolving these disputes, the divider should not reduce the visibility of the court on the other side. The immediate answer to this was the net, that ensure the ball passing below the cord was trapped on the same side of the court, while at the same time visibility of the court was also not reduced. The advent of net in tennis is traced to photographs of this game only from around the 17th century.
Similar disputes would also have arisen in football or hockey on whether the ball passed within or outside the goal post. Soon this problem would also be solved using the net that captures the ball only when the ball passes through the goal post. The first use of net in football goal post is traced to the year 1891 CE and Liverpool engineer John Brodie is credited for this investment.
Today for us, the net provides us clarity and eliminates disputes even before they arise, triggering the thought we need more nets for a lot more problems in other facets of life to be eliminated even before they arise!
Sporting Insights -14
Scoring in Tennis: Why in 15s, 30s & 40s, August 30, 2024
“If you kiss her, count fifteen,
If you touch her buds, thirty
If you capture the hill, forty-five comes up,
But if you enter the breach, with what the lady needs
Remember well what I sing to you:
You win the game outright”
This ribald verse of Theophile de Viau which became notorious in 1620s is one of earliest evidence of the tennis’s scoring system, a system that prevails right up to this day. The initial scoring recorded is of 15 for the first winning stroke, 30 for the second winning stroke, and for the third winning stroke 45 or a una, meaning one stroke to win the game or a due, when the score is tied, for two consecutive winning strokes to win the game. The current practice of calling deuce when the score is tied at 45 or later, meaning two consecutive winning strokes needed to win the game prevails even today. For brevity and ease of calling out the score, 45 is said to have been reduced to 40. Given its ancient origin, in a sport where not much history is documented, there is more than one rationale for the origin of this quaint system.
One theory for the ratione is traced to the score boards used being circular in shape like a clock, with the four quarters marked 15, 30, 45 and 60, on reaching which the game is completed for the next game to begin. Second theory is based on Tennis played for stakes, and a game was played for a crown, the basic unit of currency in France. As the crown was made up of 60 sous, to be won on winning four points, each point accounted for 15 sous each, thereby the scoring system. The third theory has it that the Tennis courts marked with lines were divided into 14 distinct parts, and the scorer had to callout where the ball fell first before calling out the score. To avoid confusion, the first number called was between 1 and 14 representing where the ball fell, and for the score, 15 was called out to represent the first point, 30 for the second, 45 which was later shortened to 40 for the third, and the game point for the fourth winner.
PS: Interesting to note that only a handful of other games exist where the pattern of scoring by 15 prevails. Rebot is a game played in Basque region of Spain, between two teams of five players each, with each game scored with points of 15, 30, 40 and game, and a total of thirteen games makes up one contest. Likewise, Pallone col bracciale played in Italy, where balls are struck back and forth with a wooden cylinder called bracciale worn over the arm of the players weighting between 1 to 2 kgs and the ball weighting 350 grams is another game with similar scoring system.
