As a fan watching sports in India, never once did I boo or hiss from the stands. Not at the opposition, not at the home players nor indeed at the most boo-able of them all, the politicians who came to inaugurate a game and spoke till the last photographer had got the angle he wanted.
I have been in the media box when some of India’s best-known players have been booed. Years ago Ravi Shastri couldn’t take the field without the boos echoing around the stadium. “It helped me focus and challenged me to do better,” said a young Shastri then.
Boos are of different textures. The one aimed at your badly-performing favourites is different from the one meant for the best player from the away team. Politicians copped a third type, while coaches and managers had a special one reserved for them.
A New York Timescolumnist wrote recently, “Fans have a right to boo. We can go so far as to say they have a responsibility to boo in that even today, in a world of ever-loudening social media spitfire, booing remains the best way for fans to express their emotions so long as it doesn’t turn into something akin to angry, torch-bearing villagers chasing after Frankenstein’s monster.”
One player was quoted as saying “We’ve got to play better and if we play better, we don’t have to hear that stuff.” That’s a remarkably mature way of looking at it.
But a responsibility to boo? I remember sitting embarrassed in the media box as Sachin Tendulkar was booed in his home town during a match. It was upsetting. If only I had realised the fans were merely doing the responsible thing!
There is a certain logic to this. Booing is a safer way to release emotion than setting fire to the stands, for example, or throwing stones at the players or anybody passing by. One of the first cricket matches I saw was the one between the visiting Australians and South Zone in Bengaluru which my father had taken me to in 1969-70.
The great Erapalli Prasanna was running through the side (he had six for 11) as the visiting side was 53 for eight chasing 200. Then skipper Bill Lawry and No. 10 John Gleeson kept padding the ball away or holding up the game with flimsy excuses. A furious crowd began pelting stones and attempted to set a stand on fire as Australia finished with 90 for eight. My lasting memory of the day is running out of the stadium, my hand firmly in my father’s grasp. Boos were certainly preferable that day.
I imagine most players would rather take a boo or two in the course of a match than be subjected to the kind of trolling — often obscene, usually pitiable — they are subjected to today.
You can always put down the boo to a spontaneous reaction to something happening on the field of play. But a social media message suggests a curse allowed to ripen with time.
