Not All Fun And Games

In Boundary Lab, Nandan Kamath examines the phenomenon of sports, "the world's largest social experiment"

- Nandan Kamath

BOUNDARY LAB Inside the Global Experiment Called Sport

PENGUIN VIKING

₹599; 304 pages

The American philosopher Bernard Suits defined the playing of sport as "the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles". After all, the easiest way to get a tiny, dimpled ball into a hole far away would be to walk up and drop it in. The clubs, the bunkers and water hazards in golf are arbitrary obstacles that have to be overcome by following rules we have voluntarily adopted.

Boundary Lab is about unnecessary obstacles too-those created by the governing bodies in India for example, those caused by insufficient or ill-understood scientific research, those caused by politics, and sometimes by outright cheating. Sport is not like life. It is life.