The Joy of Six: cool sports stars | Daniel Harris | Sport | guardian.co.uk

There's nothing cooler than being cool, as anyone who's ever been in a playground can testify, but its precise nature has vexed mankind for hundreds of years. Generally achieved via disrespect, lunacy, spitting and early puberty, the Oxford English Dictionary and early African understandings link coolness to remaining composed under pressure, immunity to the heat of impetuosity.

In all sports, and with the notable exception of Ian Wright, finishers tend to display a particular equilibrium, the opposite of white-line fever; think Romario, Preben Elkjaer, Jerry Rice and Jonah Lomu. But cricket demands a unique iteration, an individual confrontation disguised as a team game and played neither solely in the moment nor purely on instinct. The task is not simply to avoid panic at the crucial juncture but to be sure not to mislay one's excrement in between times, while the opposing captain jiggles his field and the bowler runs up.

And yet what is significant about Dhoni is not just hypergonadism to give Buster a run for his wheelbarrow, but the astounding equanimity with which he conducts himself in every conceivable circumstance. Captaining India at cricket is, whatever poor Rafa Ben?tez might contend, the most stressful job in sport by a long way and yet Dhoni has shown not the slightest sign of being affected by it. World Cup final, in Mumbai? Hopelessly out of form? Promoting yourself up the order nonetheless? Not a problem! 91 undefeated, decisive runs, blasted, glanced, carved, cut and helicoptered as if they were nothing. They were not nothing.?

In recent troubled times he has made it clear that he appreciates sport is just sport and that, when his stint as captain ends, he will accept it in accordant context. Even after his team were dealt a hiding by England in the winter's second Test on a pitch designed to assist his players, he refused to complain, glorying in the joy of undiluted sport. "Matches should happen on these kinds of wickets because it takes the toss out of the equation," he reasoned. "Whichever team plays better cricket wins the game. You want to face these challenges in Test cricket."

Martina Navratilova described herself as 'the steel ball with the marshmallow inside'. Photograph: Adrian Dennis/AFP/Getty Images

There may be holes in his technique but every Dhoni anecdote embellishes his reputation as a man who grasps the vagaries of life and is utterly at peace with himself ? in a sense the very essence of cool. A smalltown boy from a state with a backwards reputation, he worked as a ticket collector at a train station in his youth and played cricket for Railways. A group of scouts watched him smite a century and Sourav Ganguly asked him to move to Kolkata. But Dhoni refused, stating that he wanted to play only for Jharkhand, and the force of his charisma has since brought Test cricket to Ranchi, his home.

Of course, it helps that he is improbably handsome; almost disquietingly so. But he manipulates his image with respect, to make a few quid but nothing more insidious. His wife is a regular girl, they married privately and their life is their own.

And then there are the initials, helping to rescue the genre as a name from the horror foisted on it by the likes of JT and DJ. In cricket they signify a status ? consider IVA, PBH, CLR and MJK ? and Sky's decision to omit them from its scorecards symbolises the redundant decadence of modern society. But perhaps the most fitting tribute to Dhoni's cool is pure, yet perfect coincidence. In Hebrew MS ? or emess ? translates as absolute, eternal truth. The way he goes about his business suggests he knows more about that than most of us.

Billy Meredith: 'An actual role model, rather than an argument for a parenting qualification.' Photograph: Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Fonzie is cool. Everybody knows that, even when threatened with a gun wielded by a jheri-curled gangster. But Fonzie's cool, like that of another supposed icon, Danny Zuko, is based on a vacuous, detached narcissism ? in actual life, not very cool at all, ephemeral and phony. Martina Navratilova is neither of those.

Describing herself as "the steel ball with the marshmallow inside", she was a vulnerable, tough and punishingly honest presence, both natural and engaging. If crying on court was necessary, crying on court happened, likewise laughing and shouting; holding nothing back is a sensibility but those who live by it tend to have no choice. Normally seen as a competitive disadvantage, in Navratilova's case it did not matter. Her opponents were screwed whatever anyone did, because her attacking, dextrous, powerful tennis was on an entirely different plane from anything of which they were capable.

Plenty of sportsfolk do their thing in a cool fashion but the unassuming demeanour of Lionel Messi, say, though now a facet of his performance, would be unremarkable in isolation; his genius is based entirely on remarkable skill, not an expression of compelling, enrapturing life-force. The same is so of Roger Federer. If he were less obscenely brilliant, the nonchalant knowingness that also defines him would not exist ? and even so nonchalance is an aspect of cool, not a synonym. Likewise Dimitar Berbatov, Juan Sebasti?n Ver?n and Miroslav Mecir play sport in louche, flowing and enviable manner but strip that away and they are just blokes. Style is not everything, whatever Hollywood and our teenage selves demand that we believe.

Navratilova's teenage self, on the other hand, believed that she must defect from Czechoslovakia to the United States to fulfil her potential as a tennis player. Though she risked never seeing her parents again and in the event did not do so for 11 years, the power of her dream overcame the strength of her emotional ties. She later rationalised that as a youngster "you make the big decisions with a much lighter heart" but more telling was the observation that she played sport for the challenge of "testing myself against myself". This imperviousness to her opponents, the same imperviousness that made her unaware of her intimidating presence on court, allowed her to inhabit the zone for preposterous lengths of time; between January 1982 and June 1985, for example, she lost on only eight occasions in more than 300 matches.

Central to Navratilova's narrative is her rivalry with Chris Evert. They played one another 80 times and in 60 finals, 14 of those at majors; by way of context Federer's and Nadal's numbers read 28, 19 and eight, Ali and Frazier fought three times and Real Madrid have played Barcelona 223 times over 111 years. Remarkably the two share a lifelong friendship of genuine beauty, an aspect worthy of note because it is without parallel. Tennis is a confrontational, duelling sport ? it is no coincidence that Andy Murray is a boxing fanatic ? and the ability to share intimacy with your only serious rival must require immense strength of character and purity of intention.

And given newspaper headlines like 'Good against evil', part of a general tone characterising the rivalry as the sweet, all-American ? taking on, in Navratilova's words, "a big, muscular lesbian from a communist country" ? her uniform dignity reveals a genuine aura. There is being cool, and then there is being a cool person.

The most significant aspect of Navratilova's cool is in her legacy. Before her women's sport was genteel and sedate, played primarily by ladies whose group identity was determined by the dominant male gaze ? or effective men. But Martina Navratilova was a woman. Building her physique like men did, she proved that femininity was contingent on nothing whatsoever beyond the definition of the individual in question. She emoted as she pleased and where she pleased, playing with aggression, passion and flair, her conviction and convictions redeeming the singularly uncool purely by virtue of their association with her. And if improving an entrenched world with nobility and ?lan is not exactly what we are getting at here, then we are doing it wrong.

Viv Richards: 'My bat was my sword. I'd take it up, put a piece of chewing gum in my mouth and back myself every time.' Photograph: Adrian Murrell/Allsport

Old Skinny was, quite simply, absurdly dapper; high, prominent cheekbones, a stare that curdled souls, an immaculate moustache and the finest pair of hips the world had ever seen. He could swerve murderous challenges at scorching pace or ride them with whippy strength, as well as dribble, cross, pass and finish ? the perfect winger.

And yet that was not enough; he also played football while chewing tobacco, explaining that it aided his concentration. When the cleaners refused to wash the resultant spittle off his shirts, he swapped it for a toothpick and an even more iconic look that was a gift for the cartoonists of the day ? "creating as cool an impression as Clint's cheroots fifty years later," wrote the excellent Richard Kurt in his book, Red Devils.

Born in Chirk, Wales, in 1874, Meredith began his football career locally while working at Black Park Colliery. When a miners' strike forced his team to withdraw from the Combination League, he agreed to play for Northwich Victoria as well, where his performances attracted the attention of Manchester City. According to legend, when the club's scouts came to Chirk to make their approach, they were chased away by locals and permitted to speak to Meredith only once they had bought drinks for his colleagues.

Meredith quickly established himself as the finest player in the country ? "most would accept that we produced no finer until well after the second world war," writes Kurt. He became a regular presence in newspapers which, now incorporating increasing numbers of photographs, pioneered an image that netted him endorsements, appearance fees and columns, inserting a working-class presence into an arena that was previously the preserve of the privileged.

Andy Murray: 'He suffuses and supplants both with proper, uncompromising attitude.' Photograph: Glyn Kirk/AFP/Getty Images

Scoring the winning goal in the 1904 FA Cup final, he was one of English football's first stars.?"Oh, I wish I was you Billy Meredith,?I wish I was you, I envy you, indeed I do!?It ain't that you're tricky with your feet but it's those centres that you send in?which Turnbull then heads in.?Oh, I wish I was you,?indeed I do, indeed I do," went a popular terrace ditty of the time ? try fitting that to Tom Hark or Sloop John B.

But, at the end of the 1904-05 season, City lost a game to Aston Villa which ended their title hopes and featured a to-do between Sandy Turnbull and the Villa captain, Alex Leake, that ended only in the dressing room and following police intervention. The FA launched an investigation into the violence but ended up uncovering a network of backhanders ? with the wages that clubs could pay limited by the maximum wage, they were forced to find alternative methods of reimbursement. The practice was no real secret and almost unavoidable but the FA persisted with its policy as an empowered working class plainly would not do ? so Meredith asserted its immorality in every medium afforded to him.

BJ Penn: 'In the history of fighting, there has been, perhaps, no man possessed of a stronger desire to test and indulge himself at the same time.' Photograph: Josh Hedges/Zuffa LLC/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images

Thus, when allegations of bribery were made ? Meredith offering Leake money to throw the game ? the FA seized upon it. Kurt describes the exchange as "the result of a jokey misunderstanding during pre-match banter," and Meredith was not requested to supply evidence. Then, after claiming that he had acted only on the orders of his manager, and that illegal payments were common, City fired him, forcing him to write to the Athletic News:

"You approve of the severe punishment administered by the Commission AGAINST ME and state that the offence I committed as Aston Villa should have wiped me out of football forever. Why ME ALONE? when I was only the spokesman of others equally guilty."

Still suspended, Meredith signed for Manchester United, along with three of his team-mates ? but his reputation remained intact. Like Denis Law, his cool surmounted the rivalry and he remains a figure who evokes the ethos of both.

At United, his on-pitch brilliance continued but that is far from the extent of his legacy. In December 1907, along with Turnbull and the club captain, Charlie Roberts, he launched a players' union. It was part of a wider workers' rebellion that challenged the rights of the ruling classes to reward labour as they saw fit but change was resisted on the basis that paying proper salaries infringed the corinthian spirit on which football was predicated. The accordant funnelling of funds to various other interests was, of course, coincidental but nonetheless this effrontery was not well received by the various suits.

Despite the trying nature of the bribery allegations, Meredith was game for the fight. In April 1909 the FA played what it thought was its trump card, demanding that all its members insert a clause into playing contracts stipulating resignation from the union ? while the point was argued, United won their first FA Cup. But when the club was the only one that refused to comply, its entire squad was suspended. When it refused to pay those players' wages, they relieved it of various ornaments and trinkets, only returning them at the behest of the manager Ernest Mangnall, and trained under the name Outcasts FC.

"British football had never seen anything like it," writes Kurt. "United's players had been catapulted into the vanguard of the Labour movement, cited by the Left as fellow strugglers for justice alongside the miners and shipyard workers."

In October 1909, a ballot of Union members voted against membership of the General Federation of Trade Unions ? and accordingly, the maximum wage would not be abolished for a further 52 years, when Johnny Haynes became the first ?100 a week footballer. "Many players refuse to take things seriously," lamented Meredith, "and continue to live a kind of schoolboy life".

But though he failed in this aspect, the significance of Meredith cannot be underestimated ? an actual role model, rather than an argument for a parenting qualification.

Though the Joy of Six aims to enjoy things rather than to rank them, occasionally something cannot be excluded, and Sir Isaac Vivian Alexander Richards is some such thing ? and not just because stating names in full accords unarguable import. Bloody hell, he could even turn the tossing of a coin into a treatise against warmth.

His presence in the middle was like no other and began with the dismissal of the previous batsman, the Jules Winfield of cricket hanging back and getting into character.?"The wicket falls, but he allowed things to settle," wrote Mike Selvey in the Guardian. "Waiting for the arena to clear, the celebrations (more muted in those days) to die down. The theatre lights dimmed and expectation became electricity. Everyone knew who was coming. And when he finally made his entrance, swaggering down the steps, cudding his gum, and windmilling his bat gently, first one arm then the other ? I put on a performance, he told me, it was part of my act ? His reputation preceded him like an advance guard. It continued with the languid wicketwards saunter, the slow precision with which he took guard, the way he ambled down the pitch to tap down an imaginary mark, all the while looking for, and not always finding, eye contact with his adversary. Then he would smack the end of his bat handle with the palm of his right hand, a final intimidatory gesture." Or as Richards put it in the film, Fire in Babylon:?"My bat was my sword. I'd take it up, put a piece of chewing gum in my mouth and back myself every time."

Though he was a brilliant cricketer who played in brilliant style, that description applies to countless others; Kevin Pietersen, Ian Botham and Ricky Ponting, say. But Richards represented something more profound, a frightening will to power transposed directly on to his batting ? with brutal sadism and elegant precision, like being dissected with a razor-edged bludgeon.?"We had a mission," he recalled, eyes widening then narrowing with honesty and menace, lips curling with hint of sneersmile. "And a mission that we believed in ourselves that we were just as good as anyone ? equal for that matter."

Intimidating the men intending to intimidate him, with open chest, swinging bat and maroon cap, he played with a cold, controlled fury, each innings righting a social wrong. Easily the greatest batsman of the last 30 years, statistics might argue otherwise ? but only if Viv was out of earshot.

And his approach to captaincy matched his batting;?locate throat, add feet, bounce. "It was important to me to try and instil some of this ? belief. It wasn't gonna' take ordinary individuals to accomplish that. These were a special bunch who felt the same way, had the same special consciousness. It was a magnificent combination."

In recent times, perhaps only Socrates, Eric Cantona and Diego Maradona have come close to imposing similar cool upon the world, but try enumerating their qualities: seeing and doing what others can't; moral outrage; elegance; power; skill; anger; violence; charisma; individuality; improvisation; rebelliousness; attitude; the figurehead for a wider cause; and you see that Viv combines the very best of all three.

James Bond is not cool. Andy Murray is cool. Sure, Bond has a magnetism and a charm, and he's well presented and all, but that's something else ? looking immaculate means taking time to look immaculate. Or in other words, James Bond tries harder to be cool than anyone ever tried to do anything, and that is not cool. Conversely, Andy Murray tries his arse off at playing tennis, and that is highly cool. The traditional view has this the other way around: pushing yourself to do important stuff is pass?, but looking the part neutralises every joule of energy expended on its behalf. This is nonsense: cool, and aesthetic cool in particular, must be effortless if at all possible, and no one tries less hard at either than Andy Murray.

So, it doesn't matter that his caps are rubbish, his outfit a mess and his trainers an embarrassment; he suffuses and supplants both with proper, uncompromising attitude. It's not just accidentally calling an umpire a naughty couplet, though it was tricky to avoid enjoying that, but the refusal to donate a solitary copulation to anything but playing magnificent, majestic tennis.

His unwillingness to cultivate the remotest persona, appearing only as himself and loth to toss even a single bone at a slavering press corps, reflects the integrity of a true non-conformist. So, after earning a place in his first Wimbledon final and asked "what can it possibly be like for your parents?" he responded as he felt: "I'm not really that bothered. It's a lot harder for me, that's for sure." Equally, he'd rather not knock-up because "you don't spar before you box", winning his first grand slam was "nice", and securing a second immediately afterwards "is not the easiest thing to do".

There's a Yiddish word,?davkanik?? it doesn't translate directly, but means 'a person who does stuff just because', the only motivation being the capacity to aggravate others. It's one that people have, in the past, been keen to ascribe to Murray, but mistakenly ? he's just as close to normal as it's possible to be when handling a talent so thoroughly abnormal. His cool is underpinned by an unspoiled character, which, when you consider the vacuous celebrity of so many of his contemporaries ? even those who profess specifically otherwise ? is very cool indeed, especially given the magnitude of his achievements.?Reverse snobbery sometimes declares him inauthentic, but the reality is that he's just not arsed about satisfying an imagined community that means nothing to him. As long as the people he cares about are happy and he's beating the best tennis players in the world, well, what else is there?

Not much is cool by definition, but not much is fighting, a route to reputation in every conceivable arena.?The BBC's recent Africa series showed a scene on the savannah where a zebra was rejected by a herd of females. But when a group of males attempted to evict him from his territory, a crowd gathered, he repelled them, and suddenly the way he wore those stripes was just to die for. Concordantly, there aren't many single fighters out there and even fewer wondering when their next fluid exchange might eventuate; connecting foot to posterior resonates with the basest human urges, all the more so when done legitimately and for money.

That being the case, it's not difficult to compile an extensive list of cool fighters, the knowledge that a person could dust you in a second inspiring a reverence that's even more intensifying than the company of talent. There's Roberto Duran, a man who spoke English but refused to use it because he refused to show weakness; the transcendent greatness of Muhammad Ali; the genius of Sugar Ray Leonard; the balletic violence of Anderson Silva. But there remains something special about BJ Penn, beyond the ability to itch his ear with his foot, jump clean out of a full swimming pool and principled objection to having muscles.

In the history of fighting, there has been, perhaps, no man possessed of a stronger desire to test and indulge himself at the same time. Penn's natural MMA bracket is lightweight, where the limit is 155lb ? but he would rather risk a hiding from a considerably bigger man than endure a miserable existence of constant exercise, painful weight-cutting and controlled eating. Accordingly, he has fought nearly half of his 27 bouts at 170lb and above, most notably against Lyoto Machida, a man who would go on to be a light-heavyweight champion yet beat him only via decision.

And after losing his lightweight title, unable to get off against a faster opponent whose shots didn't hurt him, Penn moved up a division and fought three of its least pacifistic occupants. Plenty of fighters tout the anyone, anytime mantra, but few have embodied it with such alacrity.

The only man to win UFC belts at two different weights, Penn has been able to indulge his lifestyle because of an amazing coalescence of natural talents, a cornerstone of cool when backed up with indomitable spirit. In a rare instance of suitable nickname, he was dubbed 'The Prodigy' because that's exactly what he was, a mixture of balance, flexibility and speed, underpinned by uncuttable elephant skin, a plexiglass jaw and monstrous heart. And yet, when taking a beating in his final welterweight title tilt, he wasn't so subsumed by ego as to refuse to quit, not answering the bell for the fifth and final round; Penn is no mindless fightaholic.

Oddly, given the excitement he has delivered, his career has almost disappointed. Once declaring that "all I want is to be the best ever ? if that isn't too much to ask", with his talent, it might just have been attainable. But his compulsion to push himself in the cage didn't correlate to a desire to train in the same fashion, a failing that is part of a captivating and honest personality. But basically, Penn is cool because he's a cutey-pie. He doesn't look like a fighter, talk like a fighter or behave like a fighter ? he's a born fighter. You don't even notice that he's called BJ.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2013/mar/01/joy-of-six-cool-sports-stars

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