Sport and politics cannot be unmixed

This was obviously not one of our more astute readers, I consoled myself, before quietly wondering if there might be just a follicle of logic to the idea. Was my "do" at the time of being photographed, a little, um, severe?

Offbeat though it was, the comment connected with some incomplete thoughts I had been entertaining for a while about whether certain pastimes were right-wing or left-wing. Did some sports, for instance, appeal more to people with individualist proclivities, while others drew in those of a collectivist mindset?

And what about authoritarians? Being rules-based, sport has always attracted people with these black-letter tendencies - particularly to the officiating roles. I've known one or two basketball umpires whose attitude to questioning would have equipped them well as East German border guards.

The idea that art, religion, culture, and media can be right-wing is, of course, not novel. These have been the tools of politics since Adam was a boy. Indeed, the very fact that Adam was "a boy" - and Jesus, too, while we're at it - is fundamentally political. The pivotal events of myth and history are so routinely enmeshed with male power as to be the natural order of things.

So natural that norms linger long after the evidence behind them is exposed as bogus.

We may encounter exceptions, yet broadly speaking, we still imagine our prime ministers and our airline captains as men.

Sports broadcasting is grappling with this transition at present. How to describe the burgeoning women's cricket and football codes without making them sound subsidiary, like somehow less than the norm?

One advance has been to refer to the "men's AFL" or "the men's Ashes" rather than assuming that a news story refers to men by default unless otherwise specified.

Slowly but surely, language changes thinking. Cricket no longer has batsmen but batters, to go with its bowlers and fielders.

But old habits die hard.

Reporters recently slipped into the time-worn rut of referring to Novak Djokovic as "the world No.1 tennis player", when it turns out there's actually an Australian world No.1. She's called Ash Barty.

A trickier question arises as to whether some sports are themselves inherently right-leaning. Is golf, a bleakly solitary contest between player and course (necessitating costly equipment and membership - and usually a vast private landholding) ever so slightly Ayn Rand? (If so, a less clichéd name for the course bar than the "19th Hole" comes to mind - the Fountainhead?)

Equestrian events are the only Olympic ones I can think of where men and women compete directly, which is very 21st century - but this vestige of the landed gentry is hardly modern nor particularly accessible.

Or what about cricket, the stubbornly glacial game in which everyone fields and bats even if they're selected only for their bowling? Is cricket inherently egalitarian in this sense at least?

Then there's tennis - for me, an abiding love, and yet an increasing disappointment.

The Djokovic anti-vaccination circus cast the sport in a bad light, and not just for Djokovic's bounding entitlement.

The Serb's arrogant indifference to others reminds us that tennis is actually a pretty right-wing sport, dominated by mainly white mega-wealthy individuals who are, by and large, less socially outspoken than athletes in other codes.

The game's mindset of towering exceptionalism saw the Australian Open cluelessly collide with public sentiment even before the tournament started. In the state where the pandemic sacrifice had been greatest.

Then, before that outrage had even faded, there was another tin-eared line call, when the organisers ejected people wearing "Where is Peng Shuai?" T-shirts. Apparently speaking up for human rights - even those of an international tennis player silenced by Beijing - was "political".

Along with its chesty claim that 97 per cent of tennis pros are vaccinated (remember, these people travel internationally for a living) the world tour features clay courts and its administrators, clay feet. The governing body has gone missing on many of the social, environmental, and attitudinal advances of the 21st century.

Formula 1, which you would think is hyper-rich and hyper-male, has left tennis behind. Not only did the several-thousand-strong bubble of drivers, mechanics, media, officials, and cars successfully move all around the globe during COVID - albeit skipping Melbourne - but no driver refused to get vaccinated or indeed to mask up.

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Moreover, cars carried the anti-racism slogan "We Race as One", and Lewis Hamilton - the sport's dominant figure, and a man of colour - led drivers to regularly take a knee in support of Black Lives Matter through 2020.

Along with Sebastian Vettel, Hamilton and others also champion environmental reform, and continue to display rainbow colours on their crash helmets as a message to young fans about inclusion, diversity, and respect.

Globally, codes like football and basketball have begun rising to these challenges also. The NBA has long championed social causes under the banner of NBA Cares, running extensive advertising campaigns as well as clinics for disadvantaged children, and much more.

After some bad mistakes, the main football codes in Australia have also made purposeful statements against racism, domestic violence, and overall inclusion.

Tennis Australia has an inclusion and diversity policy, but after a fortnight of watching the Open, you wouldn't know it.

A survey in the US a few years ago by Scarborough Research found that keen sports fans were likely to be more politically conservative than the general population, and that some codes were noticeably more favoured by right-of-centre voters.

But it also showed that levels of political engagement were lower across this enormous cohort.

Almost uniquely, sport reaches these people, which means that sporting codes and their stars can reach them too. From David Pocock to Adam Goodes to Lebron James. From Cathy Freeman to Tayla Harris.

Tennis might want to ponder this. Banning discussion of the pressing moral questions of our time is its own statement.