Why sport needs to be playful

Ed Smith in Cricinfo


I'd like to make a case for sport. My argument ignores the usual theories - weight lost, arteries unclogged, endorphins released, friendships made, purpose gained, associations formed, communities knit together.


All true enough. But my theme is different. My focus is the value of play, within sport and also in life. Because it is usually perceived as the opposite of serious, we tend to trivialise play. In fact, play needs to be taken much more seriously.


I am making a deliberate distinction between merely "doing" sport and really "playing" sport. For it is possible to play sport unplayfully, joylessly going through the motions, merely acting out a prearranged plan, becoming a cog in a cold machine, becoming totally closed to instinct or mischief. Indeed, one of the ironies of the development of modern sport - both professional and, more depressingly, amateur - is that it has become progressively less playful.


There is, I think, a unique category of play, different and special: playful play. This is not, obviously, the exclusive preserve of sport - it is also central to good conversation, intellectual life, music and scientific invention. In my personal experience, however, I feel a great debt to sport in particular. Perhaps unusually for a professional sportsman, I am reflective, analytical and happy with long periods of solitude. Playing sport - really playing sport - was not only a counterpoint (and a pleasure). It has also been a catalyst.


My experience is backed up by academic research. I recently read Play, Playfulness, Creativity and Innovation by the scientists Patrick Bateson and Paul Martin. I recommend it to sports fans and sceptics alike.


Much of the book is unconnected to sport. According to Bateson and Martin, play is "an evolved biological adaptation that enables the individual to escape from local optima and discover better solutions". They use the example of a squirrel swinging on a branch merely playfully, which by accident enables it to reach nuts that were previously inaccessible. So the change in behaviour becomes a learned modification; an activity that was apparently without purpose becomes all too useful. That is how kids learn, too, the authors propose: more playful children become creative adults.




The word "creative" has become a corporate cliché. Corporate life wants everyone to be creative, which is a bit like a coach wanting every batsman to score a hundred. Well, of course. But how? The link between creativity and playfulness is rarely accounted for. As the zoologist George Bartholomew concluded: "Creativity often appears to be some complex function of play… The most profoundly creative humans of course never lose this."


Alexander Fleming, who created the penicillin vaccine, was described, disapprovingly, by his boss as treating research like a game. When asked what he did, Fleming replied, "I play with microbes… it is very pleasant to break the rules and to be able to find something that nobody had thought of."


In contrast, "the meeting" - enforced boredom orchestrated by authority - is the most anti-playful invention known to man. Any event that is closed, bounded and explicitly humourless is almost certain to be uncreative. In calling a meeting, in the traditional sense, corporations increase the probability of not finding a solution.


Thinking about play has encouraged me to rethink certain aspects of sport. When I was still a professional player, I naturally revered high performance - the score on the board. Now, from the vantage point of retirement, I can see that the only way to "win" at sport, in the deepest sense, is also to enjoy it.


I was fascinated while commentating with Sunil Gavaskar last summer to hear the master batsman say he enjoyed the second half of his career far more than the first. This from the man who scored 20 Test hundreds in his first 50 matches! A slight diminution in output was outweighed, from Gavaskar's perspective, by a far more joyful approach to batting.


When Tiger Woods was in his pomp, many of my colleagues used him as a model, perceiving him as the ultimate sportsman. But I was never so sure. Was it really so enviable, Woods' life? To Woods, sport seemed to be about negating his humanity, ironing the play out of his game rather than embracing it. We might admire his iron willpower. But how many people would a Woods-style career really suit? Santi Cazorla, the impish and mischievous Spain and Arsenal midfielder, seems to have more fun in 90 minutes than Woods has in an entire season.


For the apotheosis of unplayful sport, look no further than Lance Armstrong. Forget the cheating and the bullying for a moment. What could be more depressing than tweeting a photo of yourself sitting alone in suburban luxury surrounded by (fraudulent) yellow jerseys? Were there no happy memories, in his mind rather than his camera, to soften the blow of disgrace?


It is also possible for sportsmen, even within the fiercest battles, to cooperate in permitting an air of playfulness.


You see this occasionally in tennis. Most of the time, of course, tactics are explicitly reductionist and self-interested: doing what the opponent least wants. But occasionally a point develops that is different. Both players are constantly trying to win the point, but they also implicitly - and surely subconsciously - enter a different mode. A slice is followed by another slice (apparently inexplicably), a change of pace leads to another change of pace. In short, a conversation develops, something to be enjoyed and extended. And won. For I'm not interested in showmanship here, exhibition-style showing off or playing to the gallery. But there also are moments within proper combat when players are trying to do three things simultaneously - to win, to play (for the fun of it, selfishly) and also to encourage a similar mood on the other side of the net. It must be a rarefied, complete mode of living.


In normal life there is a simpler reason to stay playful. "We don't stop playing because we grow old," George Bernard Shaw remarked, "we grow old because we stop playing."