(‘My dear students’, a fortnightly column that is a conversation with young minds on current events, books, popular culture — just about anything that’s worth talking over a cup of coffee.)
A strange thing happened to me a couple of weeks ago. When England won against India in one of the most fascinating tests in recent times, I did not feel bad at all. This is blasphemous surely. An Indian fan is allowed to say nice things about the opposing team, in the best traditions of fair play. But I don’t think Indian fans are allowed to feel good. The very definition of a fan is that he feels bad if his team loses. In my defence, I think England are playing a brand of cricket (Bazball) that transcends cricket or if one can succumb to a bit of hyperbole, sport itself.
Maybe it’s all a marketing trick. Perhaps England will come a cropper by the time the series ends. But let’s bracket the caveats and dare to be more naive than the cynics around us would argue. Bazball has got a definition of its own now. The Collins dictionary defines Bazball as a ‘style of cricket in which the batting side attempts to gain the initiative by playing in a highly aggressive manner’. This describes the phenomenon while also missing its point completely. The aggression is only a symptom.
Bazball has two elements, neither of which are surprising. It encourages people to play without fear. But that’s not the only thing. It also encourages people to immerse themselves in and enjoy their work. Now I don’t know about you but I find both of these very difficult to manage. I want to enjoy my work and work without fear but many things get in my way: the demands of publications, the tedium of marking, and the treadmill of the timetable. I am sure you have your litany of discomforts.
But I have not even come to the most remarkable thing about Bazball, which is that it has recognised a critical fact about our agency: one can’t enjoy one’s work and work without fear unless there is a collective approach to this issue. A person cannot just get up one morning and learn to manage his life without fear. It involves a cultural shift, a community and most importantly, leadership. I said this is remarkable but its also a bit of a tragedy. I think we would rather imagine pulling ourselves with our bootstraps and leading our lives fearlessly. The tragedy is that we need a nurturing community to do so, and the presence of such a community is often just a matter of fortune. It happened to the English cricket team but such environments are more propitious than planned.
But just because a collective approach is required doesn’t mean you can’t do your bit. Here are two examples, one for the lack of fear bit and the other for the enjoy your work bit. At a party in New York, the philosopher AJ Ayer confronted Mike Tyson who was reportedly giving the model Naomi Campbell a hard time. Ayer was a slightly built philosophy professor from Cambridge. Tyson was the heavy weightboxing champion of the world.
Ben Rogers, Ayer’s biographer, wrote that a frankly surprised Tyson said ‘Do you know who I am? I’m the heavyweight champion of the world’. Ayer countered him ‘And I am the former Wykeham professor of logic. We are both pre-eminent in our field. I suggest we talk about this like rational men’ And they continued talking for some time. There are several hilarious elements in this encounter, including the fact that Ayer gave his full professorial title to Tyson. It shows a complete lack of fear and a confidence in one’s stature, whatever be the circumstances.
The second example is more personal. I visited a cafe yesterday. The lady sitting at the next table had her earphones on. I didn’t really notice her presence until, after some time, she suddenly burst into Carnatic music. I realised that she was teaching music to someone online. She was completely oblivious to the cacophony in the cafe. I wonder what it would be like to enter that state, because in that state the troubles of the world fall away and you are in that zone where the world does not impinge on you anymore. Maybe Bazball is trying to get us into that stage, and we are the better for it.
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