The Complete Upmanship

"This book is seminal in the history of sports writing. What I really like about his writing is that he is half serious and half humorous. He actually claims to have coined the word gamesmanship. Well, he was part of this somewhat stereotypical group of white English middle- to upper-class men in the early 20th century who were interested in sports. He played tennis, golf, cricket and ping pong. And among this group there was this whole concept of sportsmanship and doing the right thing when you are playing a game. But he moves that idea on to gamesmanship. He came up with this idea that there are certain unwritten rules that make you a good sportsman but to be a good gamesman you go all out to use the rules to your advantage in order to win, regardless of whether it is seen as ‘sporting’ or not. It is not cheating but it is a grey area which for many was seen as being outside convention, much like the genre which Potter made his own. When I think about cheating, for me it is almost a primal desire to win at all costs. Match fixing can be seen as the complete opposite of that. It’s all about money. Cheating is not about money; it is about winning at all costs. So for me match fixing has nothing to do with gamesmanship. It is about accepting a bribe to under-perform or perform to order. Coming back to cheating, you think of times like when Maradona scored that famous hand goal against England – that was cheating but driven by the primal desire and naked ambition to win at all costs."