The Last Word: Empathy is important Premium

What is lacking in ‘fans’ is compassion and the recognition that those who run, jump, kick a ball, or basket one, are all humans.

Transformation: Sometimes criticism fires up a player. Navjot Sidhu has spoken about how ‘Strokeless Wonder’, a newspaper headline about his batting, inspired him into becoming a six-hitter. | Photo Credit: The Hindu Photo Library

Elite athletes — even those who are extremely sociable — often build barriers between themselves and their so-called adoring public. It is not that they are addicted to music or podcasts, but they are often seen in aircrafts and hotel lobbies with earphones. One reason for this is the amount of unsolicited advice they attract from fans who have all the answers.

They are at their most vulnerable in aircrafts, where the passenger walking past who once made 10 runs in his backyard feels compelled to tell a Virat Kohli just how to alter his forward defence or Rohit Sharma when to bring in a bowling change. Such cases are usually handled politely, although I once heard a player say softly and decisively, “Thank you sir, I will now change my coach and follow what you say.”

In recent years, the word ‘criticism’ has split into two. There is criticism from the professional critic who has spent a lifetime studying, understanding, and writing or speaking about a sport and its players, and from the amateur troll for whom social media is a godsend to express mostly unwarranted vilification. And mostly anonymously.

There is a vast gulf between the two, and the effort at all times must be to keep the distance, not shrink it until they are indistinguishable from each other. ‘Click bait’, that nemesis of good intelligent writing, cannot decide the direction criticism must take.

Modern players have psychologists who advise them on handling both types without losing their equanimity or sanity. Sometimes the professional critic sounds like the worst troll as he searches for reasons beyond the game for what went wrong with a performance.

The right to criticise is seen as a fundamental right since a player is a public figure and his profession is a public performance. As a race, we are all critics, with opinions waiting to burst out.

The players are young and hardly have the life experience to handle abuse and ensure it doesn’t affect their mental health. This is especially true of those in individual sports like tennis, and truer still of women, who seem to attract the worst of the trolls.

What is lacking in ‘fans’ is compassion and the recognition that those who run, jump, kick a ball, or basket one are all humans.

In the media, there is often competitive criticism, which aligns with the love for amateurish pop psychology to explain the ‘why’ of an event and reduces things to meaningless bauble.

A dropped catch is just a dropped catch and has nothing to do with a fielder being unloved as a child or having a complex about not finishing at the top of his class in school.

Sometimes criticism fires up a player. Navjot Singh Sidhu has spoken about how ‘Strokeless Wonder’, a newspaper headline about his batting, inspired him into becoming a six-hitter. Reporters working against deadlines don’t always think about the effect their judgements might have on a player, especially one who is just starting out. But empathy is important.