The changing face of sporting rivalries

Rivals — minus the arch

I’m not a cricket fan. I rarely follow it. I have no interest in the game. But that suddenly changes when India plays Pakistan. It is a call to arms. The news filters through somehow, the mind sub-consciously follows the game and only breathes a sigh when India wins. Time, place, importance of the game don’t matter. Only the result matters.

I saw the first few overs of the game. It was enough to give me a feeling that India would lose this time — in the final, to supposedly our biggest rival, on and off the field. I won’t discuss tactics but as a lay person, I struggle to understand why India did not bat after winning the toss?

Anyway, that is immaterial. The thing to note is that this tsunami of a result just came and went away. Less than 24 hrs later, it is not even a figment of my memory. There is no bitterness, no hard feeling. Just acceptance that India played poorly and the opposing team won deservingly.

This is where the key difference is I believe.

The opposing team — not Pakistan, won. Suddenly the emotion is taken out of the result. While some tension will always be there under the hood, most of it has dissipated.

There are many reasons for this.

Firstly, India has recently dominated Pakistan enough that this result can be seen as a statistical occurrence. It’s a bit like Tottenham and Arsenal. After a very long time, St Totteringham’s day was not celebrated by Arsenal fans. For the uninitiated, this is the day, usually around the last third of the season, when Arsenal typically move so far ahead of Tottenham that they can’t be caught in the league. The duck was broken — and probably about time.

Secondly, over the years, the rivalry has become less important as India-Australia seems to have become a greater rivalry. Rivalries change over time. England Australia still play for the Ashes but heritage aside, that is no longer the premier contest that is was once.

Thirdly, the emotions associated with India-Pakistan have become less polarized. This has a lot to do with how the two countries, united by genetics (at least along the west/east border), have slowly drifted apart. We are two very different countries now. The common bonds on language and (some) customs still remain but are considerably weaker now. The young generation who is playing, and watching probably even had their parents born after the last major war between the countries (1971). Combined with the two factors above, Pakistan is now an opponent, not an arch-rival. The rivalry is much milder now compared to earlier years. Frankly, I think even if India had beaten Pakistan in the final, the joy would be been there but probably not as overwhelmingly felt had the same outcome been achieved 20 or 40 years ago.

Types of rivalries

Rivalries are of many types. I categorize them along a continuum with 4 main characteristics.

Some rivalries are eternal — like the aptly named Eternal Derby between Lazio and Roma, which is fierce in every sense of the word, up to and including violence. These will never end. The anchor one end of the continuum.

Some are just competitions — not rivalries. For example, Milan and Juventus monopolized the Serie A competitions in the 90s and while they were both very competitive, it was never a ‘rivalry’ of great folklore. These anchor the other end of the continuum.

The middle areas of the continuum are the ones that change frequently.

Some are contextual. They come and go depending on the situation. Who would have thought a few years ago that Chelsea Tottenham would start to emerge as an important London derby? Or that Napoli-Juventus would become a rivalry.

Some start as eternal but then diminish over time. This is often a gradual shift as new rivalries supplant traditional ones or where one rival becomes so much better or so much different to others that the rivalry is effectively over. There is still an emotional connection, often grounded in history. But on the field, the rival is just another opponent, Team B instead of Team [insert Arch Rival here].

Transformation points

Reflecting on India Pakistan, I feel that in all arch-rivalries, there is a concept of transformation point. A point at which the teams grow apart in a way that their rivalry is effectively over and is relegated to a routine competition.

I think there are 4 inter-related transformation points.

First one is performance. When one team has comprehensively outperformed the other one over a very long period of time, the rivalry ends e.g. Torino/Juventus domestic tussle. The reverse is also true, when a team has become a shadow of its former self e.g. the West Indies cricket team, Nottingham Forest in football etc.

The second is culture. Sports teams represent cultures — of fans, cities, countries and indeed even global. Rivalry usually is rooted in some common cultural element. As that common cultural element erodes, the rivalry diminishes.

The third is relevance. Sports are a subset of wider cultural, economic and social profile of a country or city. As countries or cities become more economically and socially diverse, I feel that the grip of sports diminishes. Take rugby in New Zealand for instance. For many years, Auckland, the largest city by far, was the best team in rugby. For the last two decades, Canterbury challenged Auckland and this has now reached the point where the rivalry has simply ceased to exist. Canterbury is far better than Auckland in rugby. Auckland shuttles between mid to lower tables generally. I feel one reason is that as Auckland became more diverse socially, economically and culturally, the sport based identity, and associated rivalry, became less important.

The fourth is the worst case scenario. Like the 1–7 loss of Brazil to Germany. Events like this instantly dissolve a rivalry. It takes a very long time to recover from a visible deterrent like this unless the arch-rival is almost immediately handed a defeat of equal and opposite measure. Equally, a worst case scenario might also generate feelings of instant detachment from the game. Instead of arguing around finer points and conspiracy theories, fans can accept the scenario as an act of fate, a permanent acknowledgement that their team is weaker or indeed as a statistical occurrence — all teams go up and down. But as soon as something like this happens, the rivalry aspect is decimated.