New Delhi, July 20 -- "Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence. In other words, it is war minus the shooting." - George Orwell

This is not the opinion of a bitter man who never played sports. It comes from one of the twentieth century's most precise and fearless observers of human behaviour. Orwell wrote this in 1945, after watching international sport tear apart the goodwill it was supposed to build. He was not exaggerating for effect. He was reporting what he saw.

If you have watched a stadium erupt in tribal fury, or seen a referee surrounded by screaming players, or felt genuine hatred for a rival team, you...