Is this how it ends? No matches, no races, no goals, no free kicks, no bouncers, no KOs.
No sports. Nowhere. Have you ever known anything like it? A virus has done what two World Wars could not.
What we, sports fans, are left with are thoughts of what will be lost. Could Mary Kom have finished her unreal career with what she calls the “final mission”, an Olympic gold? Will 2021 be too late for her?
All Olympic dreams are on hold. Dreams of Eliud Kipchoge running a sub-two-hour marathon, of a new pole-vault world record, of India’s best-ever performance at the Games. Yes, best-ever, going by the form our shooters, wrestlers and boxers were in, ranked at the top of the world, winning world championships.
Surely, there will be no IPL this year. Will 2021 be too late for MS Dhoni? Will the man who was still launching towering sixes in breathless chases last season, have to slip quietly into retirement?
Surely, there won’t be a Wimbledon. Does that mean we’ve lost our final chance to see Roger Federer hit a one-handed backhand on the run and make us jump out of our seats at the impossibility of it all?
What will you miss? I asked friends and colleagues. I heard “Federer” so many times I lost count. I heard, “watching golf and, you know, when a player is about to take a shot, and the way they show you all the variables, like the wind direction, the lay of the land, how hard or soft or what angle the last four guys hit it and how the ball travelled…”
I even heard: “Tour de France! The beauty of the scenery, and that fabulous commentary!”
I am missing the weekend rhythm of football games, that childish and fantastical hope week after week of Arsenal becoming invincible again, a hope that’s inevitably shattered come the weekend. I am missing the uplifting tale of Liverpool marching to their first league title in three decades — now left hanging midway, with no goal in sight.
What do we turn to? Old videos of Zidane doing the turn, or Bergkamp cushioning an impossible ball with the outside of his foot, or Steve Smith’s mad-genius batting at last year’s Ashes.
“It’s like sports is now something that happened in the past,” a colleague said. “I mean, imagine you’re a James Bond fan and you’re told they won’t make another Bond movie. What do you do?”
“You sit at home and start watching all the old ones, beginning with Dr No.”
