What sports teach us

Pickle-ball, golf and the new divide:

Sport was once a shared experience, it's now a purchased service.

Team at Deccan Herald - Thank you.

Pickle-ball - a racquet sport that combines elements of tennis, badminton and table tennis - began in the US during the 1960’s but was introduced in India only during the 2000’s. Its popularity, however, rose during COVID, and today pickle-ball courts are mushrooming in our cities and towns. With over 500 courts, Amadavad has emerged as the pickle-ball capital of our country.

I asked a friend, who often plays pickle-ball, why the sport is so popular. The main reason, he responded, is that the sport is not demanding: the court is smaller than a tennis court, it requires less energy than badminton, age and gender are not barriers, and it is easy to learn. On top of these, it gives players the feeling of having played a serious sport. He suggested that I observe the pickle-ball set-up not far from where I live, a set-up fairly representative of the pickle-ball set-ups in town.

The set-up he mentioned is home to 4 pickle-ball courts’; not very long ago, it would have been an open ground. The courts are well-lit and busy especially during the late evenings and weekends. The players book and pay in advance for the time they want to hire the court for. I noticed that people generally play ‘doubles’, and there is also a coach around in case someone wants practical gyaan. The players are usually well-dressed or rather a tad too well-dressed for a conventional sport. A cafe, part of the set-up, sits next to the courts, and plays loud music. All these put together enable the well-heeled to use the pickle-ball to bond and network; very much like golf. G. K. Chesterton once described golf as “an expensive way to play marbles”; I wonder what he would have said about pickle-ball. During weekdays, however, the courts are free, especially during the daytime. This is when I see men and women, many of them elderly and from the other end of the economic spectrum, cleaning the facility.

We are re-calibrating sports and getting them in sync with our priorities today - convenience, comfort and control. We have sports that are less demanding physically, allow us to remain amidst our social circles and preferred environs, enable us to play without disturbing our schedules, and that make us feel good about ourselves. Sports are becoming a service that we can purchase rather than a shared experience that moulds us. From ‘shared commons’ they are now increasingly played in ‘gated environs’. At this rate we may have separate sports for the rich and the poor in the coming days, like we have separate schools for the rich and the poor today.

Not long ago, sports meant open grounds where we played team-sports like foot-ball or kabaddi with friends. These grounds were ‘shared commons’, accessed by people from different segments of society. They were open spaces where we might also come across a cow wandering, a truck parked or a cart-owner resting. Some days, we played with strangers; on others, we waited for our turn while another game was in progress. Somedays we returned home without playing because someone else had occupied the space. On some days, we quarrelled, while on others we made friends. There were days when we were not even bothered about foot-ball or kabaddi but were simply keen to be out in the open, chat and be with friends. There were also days when we had to - in the course of a match - make way for a teammate whom the team needed more.

These experiences taught us a range of life skills: patience, discipline, how to disagree and negotiate, and the importance of putting the team before the individual. They also taught us to accept that things do not always happen the way we wish and that we all have our good days and bad days.

We have lost a large number of open grounds and spaces in our towns and cities. Bombay, for example, lost 81% of its open land (barren spaces without vegetation) between 1991 and 2018, according to a recent study. Getting these back may be wishful thinking. However, it may not be too late to rethink where we are leading our sports in our enthusiasm for convenience, comfort and control: Have we made our sports more classist? Have we diminished sport’s role in teaching us lessons that go beyond the game itself?

Two previous pieces on Golf and the Environment: 

One at The Hindu (2016) and the other at Deccan Herald (2015).