I have always loved sport. All throughout my boyhood and youth I delighted in games. An important part of my active adult years was taken up in tennis competition and to a lesser extent in squash. And I have never wavered in my opinion that cricket is an endeavour to be appreciated on the same level as good literature and great drama. Now I sit and watch sport in pavilions or in front of a television set, I read as much as I can get about sport – still turning to the sports page first when I pick up a newspaper – and I put writing about sport, especially cricket, on a par with writing about anything else.
Nearly every sport holds a fascination for me. One game in particular I never knew anything about but have grown to enjoy by watching it on TV is basketball as played in the NBA in America. At its best, it is one of the most thrilling games to watch and Michael Jordan and LeBron James are certainly two of a handful of sportsmen of supreme genius I have seen in my life.
Rohan Kanhai is another I hold in that handful along with Brian Lara. Others include, dare I say it, that supreme brat as well as supreme genius John McEnroe, and Roger Federer. For me, an enormous benefit of TV is that it brings the world’s greatest sporting events into our homes, immeasurably entertaining all of us, and especially the old ones, who love sport.
