Super Sunday and the Laws of Stupidity

Cricket in ruins

Sunday, June 18, 2017

India were playing Pakistan in a Champions Trophy Cricket Final at The Oval. The No.1 ranked ICC Test team and the defending champions were playing a team plagued with all sorts of problems, the least being no one willing to play them at home. Both teams had played brilliantly in the tournament – India dominating from the start and Pakistan starting low but rapidly gaining ground.  The setting could not be bigger – the historic Oval Cricket Ground, which hosted the first Test on English soil in 1880, but where earlier Henry VIII used to grow asparagus.

This had all the makings of a Super Sunday.

My problem, however, was sleep deprivation. Ramzan, long summer days and love for coffee all came together this month to allow me very little sleep on a working day. Sunday was my sleep catch up day. What was I to do?

On Sunday morning a friend sent an article on the Laws of Stupidity, which were compiled almost 40 years ago by Carlo Cipolla, an economist at the University of California at Berkeley (http://harmful.cat-v.org/people/basic-laws-of-human-stupidity/). His basic thesis is that “Stupidity” is the biggest threat to our existence, that there are more stupid people than we can imagine and the only defense against stupidity is for non-stupid people to work harder to offset the losses of their stupid brethren.

How do we define a stupid person? According to Cipolla’s Third (and Golden) Rule of Stupidity, “a stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses”. But the Third Law also defines people with three other phenotypes – bandits, helpless and intelligent. The bandit makes gains for himself at the cost of others, the helpless makes gains for others at the cost of himself and the an intelligent person makes gains all around.

Coming back to cricket, the media on Sunday turned out to be the bandits. They raised the pitch about this “Clash of Titans”, with predictions of how India would demolish Pakistan, with reminders of how the latter has never beaten the former in a big final, and with statistics on big names in the Indian team and relatively unknown faces from across the border. It was a done deal. In the end, more eyeballs on TV, more commentaries and more arguing on social media, all contribute to revenue. Gains all around for the media “bandits” at the cost of everyone else’s time and emotion.

It also suits another group with the bandit phenotype. The political class. Cricket, being the opium of the masses, the frenzy keeps focus away from issues of real importance such as jobs, lawlessness, education, environment, health, civic amenities, etc. Stupid people in the country talking cows and peacock have also been serving their bandit masters rather well these days. A few people heckle Vijay Mallya outside the Oval and we in India feel elated. And was there a certain Mr. Vadra on the BCCI guest list at the Oval?

Most people who watched the game were either helpless or stupid, depending upon your perspective. They did not gain anything from it. In the end it wasn’t even a keenly fought game of cricket. We the helpless and the stupid also did not factor in that India won its qualifying matches fairly easily without its middle order being tested, while Pakistan struggled and kept improving through the tournament. They were peaking at the right time, had nothing to loose and could play unshackled. We the people looked more stupid than helpless.

We should however be proud of the Indian team. Not just for the way they played, except for one bad day, but also for the dignity with which they conducted themselves. Dhoni with Sarfaraz’s son in his arms, and the two teams mixing freely at presentation are my defining images. This team should be an inspiration for the rest of us. They are good ambassadors of the game and get my vote for the intelligent phenotype.

Where does that place me? I caught up with my extended Sunday siesta, turned on the TV when India were 30 something for 3, shut it off and went back to writing something I had been putting off for two weeks.

I guess I managed to do the intelligent thing.