Steel balls, please

No balls game

Lawn tennis as we used to know it to differentiate it from the original racquet sport of Real tennis that Henry VIII played or the ping-pong game of Table tennis and now commonly referred to as Tennis is a game of balls and quite a few balls have been tested the past few months. I prefer racquet of French provenance and etymology to racket by the corruption of spelling and language used in North America.

Anyway, the issue here is Novak Djokovic, the number 1 ranked male tennis in the world who was granted a medical exemption by Tennis Australia to play in the Australia Open and defend his title. It was a case of no balls for that organisation to have done this when the rules required that all players at the tournament be vaccinated. [The Guardian: Appalling message’: outrage over Novak Djokovic’s medical exemption to play Australian Open]

Big balls boy

Now, Mr Djokovic to the eye is a strapping healthy 34-year-old at the peak of health and his sporting prowess, the burden of proof definitely had to be on him to show why for purely medical reasons he had to be allowed entry to Australia to compete. It appears that is the test that Mr Djokovic failed to convince the Australia Border Force of. [The Guardian: Novak Djokovic’s Australian Open hopes dashed after visa cancelled at airport]

For too long, issues with this Coronavirus pandemic have been politicised and usurped by libertarians pursuing freedom and liberty for the individual at the expense of community, the consequence of which is evident with us, the pandemic is still headline news as we enter the third year of its hold.

Just the balls

Indeed, Mr Djokovic has every right to privacy regarding his medical history, even his vaccination status should be protected for purposes of sheer confidentiality, and all that, he can exercise completely at fully at home. However, the moment you leave home and board a plane to travel abroad, there are limits to your exercise of individual rights within the scope of responsibility to others.

Imagine a scenario where the Australian Open had to be cancelled midway because of the outbreak of COVID-19 amongst any of the participants, players, officials, or teams and it was the unvaccinated or one whose vaccination status is unknown. There is form because the Adria Tour 2020 organised by Novak Djokovic was shutdown because COVID-19 protocols were not followed on the court and amongst spectators with some players and coaches testing positive for COVID-19. This was the risk Tennis Australia was ready to take.

Steel balls, please

Obviously, Novak Djokovic’s team would appeal the decision to cancel his visa and there is a diplomatic fallout about to result between Australia and Serbia, but common sense should prevail and that requires balls, steel balls at that. I believe the Australian Border Force have felt a handful of the balls of Novak Djokovic to traipse into Australia on a medical exemption called it out, we do not need Hawk-Eye to confirm that it was out as out can be.

That decision should stay, and Mr Djokovic can watch from Serbia his title go to a new champion that follows the rules and is deserving of the honour. For too long, people have used the privilege of wealth, power, or status to claim exemption from the rules and civic responsibility. We need examples to help us put this pandemic behind us, the good examples should be lauded, and the bad examples should never be rewarded. Put that diva on a plane and send him home.

Change that call from ‘New balls, please’ to ‘Steel balls, please’.

A failing flycatcher

The fly is a spy

One of the nursery rhymes, if it were a rhyme in my childhood, was about the lady who swallowed a fly and then a spider, and many more predators to go after the each subsequent prey she ended up swallowing and for each ingestion, I bet she died, but she seemed to have more lives than a cat. [Wikipedia: There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly]

I have been trying to get at a fly, just one fly and it has been a menace. I do not intend to swallow the fly, but anything that can help me kill it would be a joy beyond measure. Last year, I bought an electronic fly swat racket and that was ambitious of me if I were to recognise my limitations.

Hand-eye mis-coordination

My parents took me for tennis lessons when I was 8 and I was completely useless at the game, I could not even hit the ball, much as my dad was an avid tennis player. Whilst I cannot say I was ever a sportsman, the main reason I could not hit the ball was because I had astigmatism, my right eye was not aligned for stereo vision, though it was not diagnosed until I was in my late 20s.

The lazy eye meant I could not track speed and distance, my awkward handling of the racket in trying to hit the ball was simply with funny eyes, my hand-eye coordination was off. At that age, something could have been done, like my wearing an eye-patch for a period of time to correct the alignment, but in my 20s, the best that could be done was to attempt a correction in the lenses of my glasses.

Not seeing too clearly

However, I was not suddenly going to be a tennis professional once I began to see as I was apparently supposed to see things. My brain had already programmed some compensation into having a dominant eye and I managed the rest by not risking life or limb crossing roads when I was not sure, though there was one time I did cross the Apapa-Oshodi Expressway at the Isolo flyover completely oblivious of the car speeding towards me, everyone screaming and I none the wiser until long after the event. It could have been the end of me.

This eyesight deficiency has also informed my decision not to drive because of the necessity of judging the speed of approaching vehicles and how fast the vehicle is closing the distance between us is one that could make me both a poor and dangerous driver. There is nothing I need to prove in that area, I will not be able to drive. My fly-swatting racket is a dud, not so much because it cannot swat flies, but because somehow, the fly also has a mind of its own, if I do get it, I might just play the lottery too.

It perished in a lake of tea

Blandishing inexactitudes

Apparently, today marks the first-year anniversary of Boris Johnson assuming the role of Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland as well as being the First Lord of the Treasury, according to the formal titles as he became entered 10 Downing Street.

Obviously, he would trumpet his achievements, put a fine gloss on his incompetence, make excuses for the inexcusable, laud the profligacy of his government as prudent use of tax money, suggest the Brexit negotiations are working to plan, herald the Coronavirus pandemic response as world-beating, and with his remarkable sophistry work on many lies to make them true.

Death is not a celebration

What I know is that 45,808 UK citizens who could have celebrated with the Prime Minister are needlessly dead for whatever world-beating and considered actions his government took towards tackling the pandemic, we rose to the third country in the world with the highest number of deaths after the United States and Brazil. And of all the countries, we are seventh in the percentage of deaths compared to all tested 13.7 %. [Source: COVID19INFO.live]

There is nothing to celebrate if family, relation, neighbour, friend, acquaintance, colleague, or stranger cannot join in our national community to herald this landmark has died a slow, painful, lonely death mostly attributable to what their own elected government did or did not do. So, let’s park the clapping and begin to face the reckoning.

My sordid tennis ordeal

Then maybe I have something to celebrate, a fly evaded all means of capture, a bothersome insect bringing frustration of agility, focus and ability. For the purpose of netting a fly that I have been known never to hurt but to kill, I bought an electronic swatter and zapper shaped like a lawn tennis racket.

I was ambitious even though I knew I was never able to get a racquet to hit a moving ball when at 8, I was taking tennis lessons, for the simple reason that I had a lazy eye. It would have been easier for me to be blindfolded and then rely on my sense of hearing and feeling the airwaves created by the moving tennis ball to track and hit the ball. Then I thought I could hit a fly?

There’s a fly in my cold leftover tea

There was one occasion when just swinging the racquet without aiming at anything zapped an insect, but that was my only luck in 6 weeks. Then absentmindedly, forgetting to put my tea mug in the sink, it was left in the living room with a remnant of unfinished tea overnight. I woke up this morning ready to make a cup of tea for the start of my living at work day and there was a fly and very likely the fly in the cold tea.

Who would have thought cold tea was a flycatcher? I have seen no flies taunting me today and that is worth celebrating more than a year at 10 Downing Street for the simple reason that the man who occupies the place has no humanity or competence to take this nation to a good place in good or bad times. My opinion, you can have yours.