It was Carlos Mac Allister, father of Liverpool player Alexis, who coined the ideal expression for an increasingly common sporting type, the Daddy tonto. These are the crazy sports parents, those energetically misguided dads and moms of sporty kids (but yes: mostly dads) who insist on being micro-involved in a comically obsessive way.
This is not to take an anti-dad stance. Just like being a mother, which actually seems impossible to the outsider, being a father is difficult enough. This is a path yet uncharted, a relentless assault of tender feelings, the protective gene, the competitiveness, the fear of failure (the one key ingredient to not actually failing, but no one tells you this). Plus the shadow, in all our inherited words and actions, from the past tonto fathers, the fathers of history, who just happened to make it up when it came their way.
Being a father is a pure and addictive joy, because nature made it that way. But it also stimulates the senses and bends you into the strangest shapes every day. At the end of it, just when you find some kind of balance, they throw you into the wild frontier of junior sport. Welcome to los padres tontos of deportation. We were expecting you.
Anyone who has been in this world will have encountered examples of the breed, will also know that madness often goes hand in hand with more benevolent qualities, and will recognize the urge to share stories of the most extreme examples, to enjoy the spectacle. of people even crazier than you.
Often these are just funny details, like the story England batsman Keaton Jennings tells about being coached by his father Ray, who insisted on a harsh pro-sports rule that all net sessions in his youth had to stop immediately once Keaton was out three times came – That inevitably led to a situation where a four-hour trip to the nets would take three balls, the protocols would be ruthlessly adhered to, the engine would already be running for the journey home, and yes boy, you’ll get me for this be grateful one day.
The freshest material usually comes from cricket, a place where crazy dads roam free. Last week, ESPNcricinfo published a profile of Sanjay Dhas, father of India Under-19 breakout star Sachin Dhas, which, among many excellent details, started off by confirming that Sachin was indeed named after you-know-who, because: “Even before he was born I had decided that he would be a cricketer and nothing else. Okay then.
Dhas senior had his son process 1,400 balls a day from the age of four. He started a cricket academy so that his son could attend a cricket academy. He demolished part of the family home to build a personalized indoor training hall. He also stoically fended off the concerns of his wife, who occasionally talked about the need for things like schoolwork, but thankfully, “I didn’t listen to her.”
In an outcomes-based world, the results are visible. This month, Sachin scored 96 against South Africa in the semi-final of the Under-19 World Cup. And just this week there was a father-son companion in the rise to fame of Naushad Khan, father of Indian Test debutant Sarfaraz, who appeared on the Rajkot outfield as his son received his cap and was pictured crying, as the papers reported expressed it. , “inconsolable” (at one point Khan senior took the cap in his hands and appeared to try to eat it).
This is not intended as criticism. Like everyone else, I cheered wildly for Sarfaraz’s father, who was very hoarse, brave and silent when the cameras picked him up at his son 50’s debut, and I am now desperately looking for Sachin to make it too, or at least enough to do to leave his father behind. crazy father happy in his crazy dotage.
It’s worth pointing out at this point that being an Indian cricket parent is a very distinct experience. What is being celebrated here is a triumph over impossible odds, the elevation of a humble child to another economic sphere, an example of social mobility in a country that wanted to hear these stories.
It’s also worth being clear about the definitions. The Daddy tonto parent does not include actual, harmful, abusive lunatics. Nor are we talking about sporty parents who engage in tontonity because of the need to combat some entry-blocking shitshow from a junior system, not least the parents of girls who have often found it necessary to push and micro to become. -involved because their sport is simply not ready to provide a well-supported pathway. We salute these warrior parents and look forward to a day when the need for tone is removed by a functioning open door.
But there is a broader point here, an echo of what elite sport is becoming. Cricket in particular has a huge access problem in England. Without an established entry point – fancy school, crazy parent, easy-to-access club – it becomes almost impossible to know the sport exists, let alone use its facilities.
There are obvious reasons for this, particularly the decline of sport in state schools, the lack of funding and space to sustain rewarding but difficult pastimes. So we end up with a situation where England Under-19 teams in the national summer sport (in a country of 60 million people!) are packed with the descendants of former professional cricketers.
There is also a problem in the success stories. We only see the Sachins. We don’t see the thousands for whom the process is the same but the outcome is different, obsessions that must lead to nothing because massive failure is built into the system. Top sport sells you a way out, a ladder to the stars. But even this is built on the backs of those who, out of necessity, must fall into the same path.
There is another line attached to it. For all the talk about endless repetitions in junior coaching, there is no real evidence that this isn’t ultimately just a matter of talent, luck or personality. The best episode of the week’s cricket dad, the absolute model, is the story of India’s other Test debutant Dhruv Jurel, whose soldier father wanted his son to have a more stable career and actively discouraged him from playing cricket.
One day during breakfast, Jurel senior noticed something. “He was reading the newspaper. And he suddenly told me, ‘There is a cricketer who has the same name as you, and he has scored so many runs.’ I got scared and didn’t know how to tell him that I was this cricketer.
Dhruv even stopped playing for a few years, fell back in and now, aged 23, plays for India. The most reassuring story, and one we all want to believe, is that talent will blossom and find its form no matter what you do with it. As in all things, a bit of both, freedom and control, is probably the ideal. In the absence of plans, resources, structure, los padres tontos will continue to fill these spaces.
-
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? To submit an email response of up to 300 words to be considered for publication in our letters section, click here.