Before the Match Begins: The Narrative Agency of a Ball in a Javanese Geguritan

Abstract

This article examines Muhammad Eriza Abikara’s short Javanese geguritan Bal through postclassical narratology, object agency, and narrative pedagogy. Although the poem contains no match, opponent, score, or victory, it produces a compact narrative in which a ball moves from material object to tactile companion and finally to a source of enthusiasm for learning. The study applies close textual reading to diction, repetition, temporal markers, apostrophic address, spatial thresholds, and the distribution of agency among the child, ball, school, classroom, and physical education teacher. The findings show that the poem is organised by a pre-competitive temporality. The repeated word sadurunge, meaning before, situates the ball at the threshold between play and institutional learning. The verb dakcekel, meaning I hold, creates tactile intimacy, while ngancani, meaning to accompany, grants the ball a relational role. Rather than distracting the child from education, the ball generates semangat sinau, or enthusiasm for learning. The article proposes the concept of the pre-competitive life of the ball to describe sporting objects before they are absorbed into competition, spectacle, nationalism, and measurable achievement. In contrast with the global visibility of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, Bal presents football as an intimate pedagogical relation. The poem demonstrates how a minimal vernacular text can distribute narrative agency across human and nonhuman participants and rethink the conventional opposition between play and learning.