The American author and short story author John Cheever stated it best, although others too have stated something similar: “I can’t write without a reader.”
It is the reader who makes the writer; the audience that makes the performer. Can you conceive of a concert, for instance, in an empty hall, or a cricket match with no one in the stands? A few months ago this would have sounded unreasonable. Now we are required to consider it in our virus-induced world of isolation and inactivity.
The UEFA Champions League, Serie A in Italy, the English Premier League, Mexico’s football league were only some of the occasions that explore matches in empty arenas prior to lockdowns and travel restrictions became the standard. There is something strange about playing in empty arenas– specifically considering that we call popular sports ‘spectator sports’.
Cricket has in some cases been played in empty stadiums– but that was due to the fact that no one showed up to watch. The expression “two men and a pet dog” was used so typically to explain the turnout at some county matches in England that it has actually progressed into a sporting cliché. In India over the last few years, Ranji Trophy matches would often count also attended if 2 men