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In only his third race in Formula One, David Purley did something quite extraordinary in sporting history.
On the eighth lap of the 1973 Dutch Grand Prix, Roger Williamson’s car suffered a puncture, resulting in a fire-engulfing crash with the driver unable to pull himself out of the car. Purley, the fellow British driver and competitor, stopped in his tracks and ran across to help Williamson. Purley tried everything he could, from overturning the car himself to dousing the flames with a fire extinguisher. Nothing worked. Williamson, 25, did not survive.
Curiously enough, none of the other drivers paused and there was little help from the race marshals (reports stated they mistook it for an accident involving Purley) as the race motored along uninterrupted.
Purley was later hailed as a hero for his sporting spirit, letting his human instinct take over that moment. But could we say the other drivers were wrong, inadvertently or otherwise, in keeping their competitive instinct going and doing what they were out to do that day — win a race?
This particular incident involving the death of a young driver, a young life, was alarming and unprecedented. A bit amusing, although equally unprecedented in international cricket, was the timed-out dismissal of Angelo Mathews in Sri Lanka’s World Cup game against Bangladesh. With his helmet strap snapping, Mathews overshot the two-minute limit to face his first ball. Opposition captain Shakib Al Hasan appealed. The umpires smiled, accepted it, asked Shakib if he wished to withdraw the appeal. Shakib stood his ground. Mathews had to walk off.
Shakib has since been subject to plenty of heat on social media, while Mathews has come out all guns blazing with words and videos. The details of it aside, was Shakib wrong in finding a way to gain “any advantage available to win a game”, to quote Sanjay Manjrekar’s post on X, within the laws of the game? Perhaps not, and Manjrekar for one wouldn’t grudge that either. Was Mathews right in expecting the use of common sense by everyone involved, in that it was a genuine case of equipment malfunction and not tardiness? Probably yes, even though you’ve seen batters padded up with helmets on waiting for their turn in dug-outs.
Both protagonists made a reasonable case for themselves. Eventually, thus, you might say there’s no right or wrong when it comes to gamesmanship in sport. It comes down to how an individual — or a team — perceives it, wishes to abide by it and under what circumstances (Shakib felt he was “at war”, with his team poised to nudge ahead in a critical juncture of the match).
More importantly, it’s about how they want to play sport.
Gianmarco Tamberi and Mutaz Barshim chose to play sport their way. After each jumping 2.37m and unable to scale 2.39m in the Tokyo Olympics high jump final, Barshim casually checked with an official whether they could share the gold medal. The reply in the affirmative, the two simply shared a glance, a smile and a clap with each other. On the most demanding test of one-upmanship in elite sport, the Qatari and the Italian shared an Olympic gold medal.
Amazingly, they also went by the rules. One that, as he would admit to The Guardian, World Athletics president Sebastian Coe did not remember existed. However, even with that oft-revered spirit-of-sport act, Coe wasn’t sure how it would be received by the masses. “I thought I’d wake up in the morning to all sorts of negative headlines,” Coe told The Guardian. “But as I tried to sleep I was listening to Radio 4 and they kept saying it was the most uplifting story of the Games.”
Tennis player Amarissa Toth chose to play sport her way. In a match against Zhang Shuai in Hungary, she rubbed off a ball mark on the court following a contentious line call. Tennis pros generally do not touch the mark, especially on close calls for which the chair umpire has a closer look. There’s no written law about it; it’s more an unspoken rule. Toth, in her undiluted objective of winning the match, chose not to follow it at that moment. A tearful Zhang soon conceded the match. Heavily criticised on social media by former and current players, Toth came out with an apology later. “I focused on tennis, I didn’t want to win like that,” she said.
Mathews, incidentally, has had some regrets of his own. In 2014 under his captaincy, Sri Lanka had dismissed Jos Buttler for backing up too far at the non-striker’s end. The umpires checked with Mathews about withdrawing the appeal. He did not. Looking back years later, Mathews said in an interview to Divaina Online that “we shouldn’t have done it”.
Marcelo Bielsa wanted Leeds United to play sport his way. In 2019 in a second-tier Championship match in England, the Argentine football coach instructed his Leeds United team to allow the opposition to score an uncontested goal. They’d scored against Aston Villa while one of their players lay injured on the ground. The rule allowed the goal, but Bielsa’s conscience did not. 1-0 became 1-1 and Leeds missed out on a Premier League promotion.
“Some residents of planet football consider winning the ultimate. The only purpose of playing the sport,” Bielsa told FIFA. “For others though, there are values which need to be held even higher than those which bring victory.”
That perhaps sums it up. The victory-versus-values conundrum is subjective, based largely on an internal perception of sport. You can play to win, using any means within the laws of that game. You can play the right way, making the outcome secondary. Neither is right nor wrong.
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