Sunday

The Ashes this year will never be as popular as they were two summers ago, despite the frantic attempts of the media to make them. What made the event so special back then was a culmination of many factors both fathomable and unfathomable. Not least of which was that they took place in this country in almost every major city, like a touring circus. What also worked was the human engagement. In fact, it might be said that this was the defining factor in the success of the series. Most sport on paper is rather uninteresting. What makes us watch is the human drama. We become involved with the characters, like we would a soap opera, and cannot tear ourselves away. Later we try to define the sport on other terms, intellectually, as a reason for watching. These are always, however, after the fact. What first caught our attention was the people, like actors in an elaborate play. I believe someone even once said that F1 was the greatest sport narrative novel: year long you are engaged in the story of a few men struggling for one reward (and then you are compelled into the next year, and so on). I have been trying to convince a friend to watch Motogp, but he refuses. He gives many perfectly valid technical reasons for doing so, but these amount to little when you are empathetically involved with the characters. Everyone has forgotten who took part in the Ashes two years ago, we have lost who they are and what they do, and hence, I believe, the series will hardly be watched.