After he got to his 100th international century, Sachin Tendulkar said that it would be selfish of anyone to retire at the top. “When you are at the top,” he said, “you should serve the nation.”
Yet, selfishness is an important, even necessary element in the make-up of elite sportsmen. Even a team sport like cricket is a face-off between two individuals: the batter and the bowler. And while the elements of selfishness and self-absorption are seen as necessary in individual sports like golf and tennis, it does not take a great leap of the imagination to see these as universal traits.
You only have to look at the run outs in the game — the better batter is always protected, the lesser player making the sacrifice even if it wasn’t his fault. The senior batter knows he is being selfish, but that is in the team effort. You can, of course, take this to a ridiculous extent, as when a senior player withdraws from a match because he thinks the track looks pacy (this has happened often in Indian cricket).
