Sporting Instincts of Aggression
Professional sport at its highest levels is very much like war. And men who are able to simulate the conditions of war, within themselves and outside, are rather more successful in finding the aggressive edge at a crucial stage of a contest.
Nirmal Shekhar, sports writer, in an article, refers to Garry Chess Association world championship match in New York. It w shocking to say the least, as one watched the highest rated Play as in the history of the sport slam the stage door in a rather deliberate and theatrical show of emotion after each move in game 10, against Viswanathan Anand.
Trailing 4-5 at that time, Kasparov knew that he needed to pull off something that was at once dramatic and substantial; to stem the rot before his young Indian opponent began to build on the momentum of a victory that broke a sequence of eight successive drawn games.
And, during the course of that crucial game at the Observation Deck of the World Trade Centre, Kasparov seems to have vented his anger on the stage door, banging it shut as he made his Way out of the stage after every one of his moves.
What kind of effect this piece of gamesmanship might have had on Anand is debatable. But, looking back, it is clear that the champion was looking for more than just a match-knotting point from that game.
Actually, what Kasparov was looking for was a chance to prove a point, to prove that when it comes to getting pumped up for the job, when it comes to a show of aggression, the challenger may not be able to match him. His intention—loud and clear—was to slam the door on Anand, literally and metaphorically.
And, in a sport where you move pieces on a 6-4 square board to get the better of your opponent, rather than try to gree arrange his jaw for the purpose—in the absence of the Mike Tyson option, that (slamming the door) is as much as Kasparov could have done by way of a show of naked aggression.
Professional sport of its highest levels is very much like war. This, of course, means that it takes a war—like nature to revel in the pressure cooker atmosphere and remain consistently successful.
To be sure, this is not a cliched nice-guys-finish-last theme—something that has been battered to death in sports, but still keeps rearing its emancipated head now and again. What we are concerned here is about the flip side, about how men who are able to simulate the conditions of war, within themselves and outside, succeed in finding the aggressive edge over their rivals.
In Kasparov’s case, this aggressive edge apart—he was also seeking something else’s—an enemy. He desperately needed to find an enemy, a role into which his suave, softly spoken Indian challenger didn’t seem to fit at the start, and in a fact, did not fit even midway in the series.
No matter that, Kasparov, in his need for an enemy, had to turn Anand into one. And this, given the background of their earlier contests and the genuine respect they had for each other, was not an easy task at all. Yet, Kasparov, the champion, knew that if he didn’t find the enemy to fuel the fire within, he might be staring down the barrel towards the end of a serene series between friendly rivals.
Looking back, Kasparov never really faced this problem when he played his arch rival, Anatoly Karpov, in three world champion-ship matches. Then, there was never any need to create an enemy. The enemy already existed in the form of Karpov.
In his mind, and in public eyes, Kasparov was the extroverted, charming, all-conquering rebel hero, engaged in a legendary battle with a cold, pale introverted son of the erstwhile Soviet establishment. The roles were assigned. The battle lines were clearly drawn. And there was no need for Kasparov to whip himself into, action, to violently trod on the pedal to get the adrenalin, the fuel of aggression, flowing.
While it may be true that in any great sports contest, a calm mental attitude is far preferable to the stress that comes with reviving yourself up, there are occasions when the psyching up process has to be activated immediately.
It would be foolish to imagine that a sportsman can remain in that highly charged psyched up state for the duration of a major event, such as a 20-game chess championship match. But, for the duration of one critical strike, as in the 10th game of the Kasparov-Anand contest, wonders can be worked when the right button is pressed.
And, the great players always seem to know when to reach out for the magic switch. For, almost always, success depends on the timing. When you get the timing wrong, everything can go wrong. Also, when you do it once too often, it can be detrimental to health, literally and figuratively—in the long run.
In the event, one wonders what kind of an effect, in the ultimate analysis, this curious process of “getting psyched up”, a transformation that is highly charged with passion, would have had on someone like John McEnroe.
Arguably the most gifted tennis player of the modern, McEnroe never really had to go in search of enemies. He had plenty of them, both within and outside. The crowds, the media, the officials, there were enemies everywhere, real and imagined that the enigmatic New Yorker battled for the most part of his career.
Then McEnroe’s famous outbursts on the courts, Wimbledon and elsewhere, were not really the easily understandable variety of the ‘getting psyched up’ routine. As a challenging-of-aggression ritual, McEnroe’s was something rather special, something that struck you as contrary to common logic.
One was never sure whether the sharp edge of McEnroe’s aggression would turn on himself or against the opponent. And, as it happened, it turned as often one way as it did the other Way. Yet, at crucial moments, in a big match on the big stage, the left handed genius would hit the magic switch with a great sense of timing.
But, finally, as McEnroe walked away from the game for almost a full season towards the end of 1985, and then struggled to recapture the transcendental brilliance of his peak, one wondered if the- great man’s infamous getting-psyched-up routine perhaps took too much of a toll. Emotionally, indeed, if you hit the switch) once too often, you might be in trouble in the long run.
Of course, there have been several other great players-individual sports as well as in team sports—who have managed to get themselves sufficiently pumped up for the big occasion consistently, without suggesting that they might have paid as heavy a price for this aggressive attitude as perhaps did McEnroe.
Possibly, the one that will figure right on top of my list in this category will be Jimmy Connors. The legendary American tennis pro seemed to reach into some inexhaustible source of aggressive energy, and he was almost as assertive and belligerent at age 40 as he was at 20.
At the peak of his abilities, Connors psyched himself into believing that his No.1 enemy in the world was Bjorn Borg, the man who beat him in two Wimbledon finals in the second half of the 1970’s, and Cannors’s famous words—”I will follow the SOB to the ends of the earth”—are an immortal part of tennis folklore. In almost every other high-profile individual sport, including boxing and Formula One racing, the At-War-Syndrome has been at work from time to time. At some time or the other—perhaps several times altogether—in their careers, men such as Muhammad Ali, the late Ayrton Senna, and a few others have had to resort to a variation of the now famous ‘getting psyched up’.
These acts have worked wonders both as expressions of machismo, and in helping their authors remind themselves in time that they are indeed performing a role largely akin-even if it is considerably refined and the result itself harmless—to the one that our distant ancestors played out in hostile environs to find their break-fast and dinner.
After all, man is still very much a hunter. And Garry Kasparov’s slamming-the-door routine was no more than a ritual channelling of aggression, a kind of sabre rattling, a teeth-gritting preparation for the big hunt.
