Why the best of enemies make for a perfect contest
With so much sport flooding our airwaves these days, it makes those moments that matter all the more precious, writes Jim Tucker.
When sport reaches the current saturation levels, one maxim often holds true. A great champion needs a great opponent.
It elevates a contest beyond mere winner and loser as we saw last weekend with that riveting India-Pakistan clash in cricket’s T20 World Cup. Sure, a tight last-over finish against Bangladesh would have been good TV but a victory like that? Over Pakistan. In front of more than 90,000 screaming fans. In the latest chapter of an epic rivalry.
Masterful Virat Kohli v Pakistan. I still don’t know how he played that stand-and-deliver drive over a fast bowler’s head for six off a short-of-a-length ball at the precise moment that anything less made winning impossible.
That was something else. The match was dripping with meaning on so many levels.
We see it all the time. Any Broncos-Cowboys clash in the NRL has us invested. If the Cowboys were going to win their first grand final, there was no more script-perfect match-up than pitting them against the Broncos.
The 2015 decider won 17-16 by the Cowboys is regarded by many as the best grand final of the modern era. So much of that was generated off playing against their great Queensland arch rivals.
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Likewise, the “Big Three” era of tennis when Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal ruled the courts. All were made greater by facing each other in classic Grand Slam finals from Wimbledon to New York. Never was there a foregone conclusion.
Longstanding opponents sometimes turn their contests into great theatre even if they are not, at that moment, the best in the world.
We’ve seen it at Ashes time when India might be world No.1 but nothing is more meaningful than Australia v England.
Even when the late Shane Warne was knocking over clueless English batsmen like they were Teletubbies trying to grip a Gray-Nicolls in the ‘90s, it was must-watch. “Warnie v England” was all you needed.
Bledisloe Cup rugby Tests were peak entertainment when it was No.1 v No.2 in the world and the result between the Wallabies and All Blacks was a lottery. The John Eales kick in Wellington, the Toutai Kefu try in Sydney, the late Jonah Lomu matchwinner in the ‘Test of the Century’…great moments were fed by great opponents.
Try telling a fan of either club that Carlton v Collingwood meant less in the AFL when both were lagging in the bottom half of the AFL ladder. A roused Tonga defending a second half lead against New Zealand would be a boilover to capture the imagination but tuning in to anything else at the Rugby League World Cup in England is a struggle.
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More and more, we do put filters on what sport we watch. That’s unless your armchair is your castle. You can channel surf from darts to diving, E-sports to surfing, the Caribbean Premier League to the WBBL and everything in between. On the November 12-13 weekend, you can watch seven rugby Tests plus the Rugby World Cup final for women from Auckland’s Eden Park as a virtual 16-hour marathon on the pay-for-view Stan Sport platform.
That’s an awful lot of box kicks with your beers, Red Bull or late-night coffees.
When the Australian PGA comes to Royal Queensland Golf Club in November, the Cam Smith-Adam Scott match-up will be pure box office. Organisers are trying to build more corporate facilities such is the interest.
Give me matches with meaning, great rivalries, big occasion clashes. That’s the “ON” button in my house.
That’s why Friday night’s Australia v England T20 from the MCG is a must-watch. Both countries are playing for survival at the tournament.
There have been plenty of “ON” buttons in Irish homes recently even for those sports lovers with only a vague idea of the difference between a googly and short third man. Knocking the once-mighty West Indies out of the T20 World Cup preliminaries was big enough. Upsetting supposed T20 superpower England, with good cricket helped by the rain rules, was headspinning.
Beating old foes England at anything, much less their own game, has created very tasty permutations with semi-final spots so up in the air.
One of those sports research companies produced some very interesting figures a few years ago.
It showed just how much sport Aussies watched on TV. It also painted a clear picture that the more you watch sport on TV, the more critical and hard to please the supporter base becomes. There were high numbers of Australian sports fans in that category.
Watch an English Premier League football match. The way some social media “judges” react is as if every pass missed to a player closing in on goal with two defenders around him is a heinous lack of skill.
Anyone who attends live sport will tell you how difficult the skill is to thread a pass over 25m, on the run, to another moving target with defenders trained to pounce. Elevated camera angles can show more space when ground level vision for a player shows only a crowd.
We’ve all yelled at the screen when we see a support player out wide and can’t understand how a ball player in the NRL just isn’t seeing him too and using an overlap. We have become borderline excruciating with how hard we mark skill on the sporting field.
That’s why seeing that Kohli straight drive and the effortless flick for six behind square leg the next ball were so eye-popping.
Not one person, in the stands at the MCG, or watching on TV imagined they could throw the same 6-6 knockout punch.
That outrageous skill even had the most hardened armchair viewer in awe.
There may be more sport on TV than ever before. There may be more sport with less real meaning on TV than ever before.
Find a game with meaning. Find a moment with meaning and the champion with a great opponent and there’s no better viewing.
Jim Tucker has specialised in sport, the wider impacts and features for most of his 40 years writing in the media.
