What's fandom about?

The retirement of Virender Sehwag produced, along with the usual statistical analysis and journalistic retrospectives, a torrent of tributes from cricket fans. We can all agree that Sehwag was a cricketer of significance, whose career will be remembered for many years to come. But for some fans, he was more than this; he was a childhood hero.

The process by which a cricketer becomes a hero is not an objective one, and has only a casual link with success or talent. It forms early in life, almost at random, perhaps when a particular shot, a crucial innings, a moment of chivalry, or a trivial coincidence like a shared birthplace catches the imagination of a young fan.

It's the beginning of that curious relationship between fan and cricketer. As a child, you follow your hero's deeds; you excuse their mistakes, sympathise with their misfortune, celebrate their successes and defend their reputation against anyone who suggests they've got a dodgy forward-defensive or a wayward googly.

Inevitably, you want to imitate them. In some cases this can help the young fan to gain a deeper understanding of how the game works, or even start them on the path to their own career as a professional cricketer. In my case, it meant borrowing a book on cricket technique from the library and painstakingly assembling a Richard Hadlee-style bowling action from a series of still photographs of the great man.

It almost worked. After many hours of posing, I had developed a run-up to please the cricket gods. I glided to the crease, arm swinging rhythmically, chin jutting. I drew myself up into the delivery stride with an effortless sweep of the arms, leapt elegantly through the air, landed, then let go of the ball; at which point innocent bystanders, neighbours, cats and pigeons scattered. It turns out there was more to Richard Hadlee's bowling than a stylish run-up. I was a violin player with a highly polished violin but no discernible musical ability.

From the hero-worshipping stage, the child fan moves on to collecting autographs. At least, some children do. I didn't, mainly because I couldn't see the point of it. Why, just because I liked watching him play cricket, would I want some sweaty man to scrawl his name on a piece of paper? But then, I was a miserable, contrary sort of child.

In a cynical world, autograph-hunting remains an expression of untainted enthusiasm, a touching ritual that costs the player nothing and means everything to the child. It's a scene that has been recreated endlessly throughout the decades: the small flock of children at the boundary edge, the cricketer scribbling his name on a book or a tiny bat between deliveries. You can see it in black-and-white photos from the 1930s, in flickering Technicolor in the 1970s, and at IPL games in 2015.

Adults collect autographs too, but that's an altogether more sheepish affair. When an adult collects an autograph, it is out of habit, out of a subconscious desire to recapture the innocence of childhood, but not out of genuine, untainted hero worship. Indeed, knowing all that an adult knows about human beings, how could you still think of cricketers as heroes?

A hero performs heroic deeds. Keith Miller famously said that pressure was a Messerschmitt up your arse, not playing cricket. If Miller was a hero, it was for the things he did while sitting in a cockpit over Germany, not for his feats with a bat in the middle of a green field on a pleasant summer's evening. The art of manipulating a small leather ball, while capable of great heights of refinement, weighs in pretty low on the bravery scale.

You could argue that the death of Phillip Hughes demonstrates that cricketers are risking a lot when they take the field, and that their bravery could therefore be considered heroic. But the cruel death of this talented young man was a horrific accident, not an occupational hazard. If death were the risk that every cricketer took when they stepped onto the field, then cricket would be banned tomorrow.

Heroes also tend to be individuals we look up to as exemplars. But is it fair to regard cricketers like this? They are highly trained professionals but they are humans like the rest of us. They lose their temper, they make mistakes, they get drunk, they swear, they fall out with people, they behave unreasonably, they cry, they lose their car keys; they get scared when asked to spend the night in haunted castles. They don't ask to be regarded as heroes, and who can blame them? Imagine your every move being scrutinised, and your every failing being considered a let-down. Would you want to be a hero?

Sadly, some fans never leave behind their hero-worshipping stage. Social media provides an outlet for people who should know better to abuse players they dislike or to vigorously defend the honour of their heroes. Perhaps this is partly because cricketers are both more wealthy and more remote than they were in previous generations, so it is easier than in years gone by to think of them as soap-opera characters or reality-television stars rather than real people. A minority of fans seem unable to separate the person from the cricketer and feel as though they have a right to comment on their private lives, as demonstrated by the vitriol directed at Virat Kohli's girlfriend earlier this year, when a section of Indian fans took it into their heads that she was to blame for Virat's poor form.

But the other side of the relationship has also changed. Many modern players don't seem to look at fans in the same way that their predecessors did, which isn't surprising. Although this isn't the case in every cricket-playing nation, a high proportion of the planet's professional cricketers live in a bubble of training, playing and practising. They don't have winter jobs, they don't travel on public transport, and you are unlikely to bump into them in the pub or in the street or at the supermarket. They've lost touch with the ordinary fan.

Going by their public statements, it seems that many cricketers now think the fan is there simply to cheer them on, breaking off from this unceasing encouragement only in order to boo their opponents. For example, English cricketers often praise the outrageously partisan, alcohol-fuelled atmosphere at Edgbaston as though it were somehow the ideal. But most fans have a more nuanced view of the sport. We aren't employed by our national cricket boards as patriotic cheerleaders. We can separate our reaction to the result of a game from an appreciation of the way the game was played.

The thinking fan doesn't revere cricketers as heroes in the same way that children do. This fundamental misunderstanding on the part of cricketers perhaps explains why many autobiographies are so tedious. They are invariably light on the things we want to read about: technique, tactics, insights into the details of playing professional cricket or insider tales of dressing-room life, and instead seem to be launched on the premise that it is sufficient to put a cricketer's picture on the front cover and tack together a few weak anecdotes in order to get his loyal fans queuing up to part with their cash.

This cynical and one-dimensional view of the fan underestimates us. When I'm watching Virat Kohli bat, it isn't Virat Kohli the man I am interested in. I don't care where he went to school, what the name of his first pet was or whether he prefers low-fat margarine to butter. Virat Kohli isn't my hero, and I don't care what he thinks on any subject.

I'm interested in him only in so far and for as long as he bats. On the field, he is performing the part of Virat Kohli, another character in a long tradition of public theatre. How he wields his bat, how he waits at the crease, how he moves his feet, all these things taken together form the Virat Kohli of the mind's eye. He may have had some interesting things to say on geopolitics, he may have had an unusual upbringing, and he may have an entertaining line in golf anecdotes, but to be honest, I am only interested in his batting.

As CLR James explained, when we watch cricket, we are not watching a sport but a form of art. The ultimate pleasure of the fan is in appreciating the unique way that each cricketer plays the game and comparing them with those who have gone before, not as irreplaceable heroes but as skilled individuals who enrich the sport with their particular style for a brief time before being replaced by the next generation.

So through many long hours of watching, talking, and thinking cricket, from our childhood hero worship, we arrive, via experience, at the fully developed relationship between fan and cricketer, in which both can respect one another - not as heroes and cheerleaders, but as talented performers and appreciative audience.