A one-sided coin

The question was posed with all the innocence of youth. “Looking forward to tomorrow night, are you Rob?” wondered one of my students yesterday. What followed was the often contradictory sound of a middle-aged boy grappling with snobbery, conscience and the dilemmas thrown up by a world changing rather too rapidly.

“No” was the short, unhesitating answer. The prospect of tuning in to this evening’s $20m showdown in Antigua, of watching a match whose individual feats will only ever appear in one edition of Wisden, one in which the slightest human frailty can only prove costly in the most literal sense, is not one that fills me with any pleasurable anticipation.

Elaboration, though, was called for. Journalism students demand no less. No, I emphasised, there is not a single morsel of me that begrudges the players their potential wealth. Given that cricketers’ earnings have long lagged behind those of footballers, baseballers and basketballers, let alone golfers and tennis players, I’m both proud and chuffed that the biggest prize in the history of team sport should be destined for practitioners of flannelled folly.

And no, I don’t give a fig whether the greatest beneficiary is Sir Allen Stanford’s ego. How many billionaire philanthropists are not self-publicists? So long as Caribbean cricket prospers as a consequence, who cares?

And no, I stressed, the game’s least time-consuming, most slapsticky format does not, in itself, prompt snottiness. If the match was to be conducted over 50 overs per side I would feel no different. If it lasted five days, moreover, any enhanced enthusiasm would be more than counter-balanced by the fact that only one team would be rewarded for their efforts.

Wherein lies the rub. “There are two teams out there,” Bill Woodfull famously informed “Plum” Warner from the Adelaide treatment table during the Bodyline series, “and only one is playing cricket.” The philosophy here is not dissimilar.

Yes, if a catch goes up with two runs required off the final ball, the tension will be enormous, and sport is nothing without suspense and drama. But the consequences of fielding fallibility will be too great for comfortable viewing, not least since, no matter how strenuously they protest, the sinner will be forever damned in the eyes of his team-mates. In a close game, even a mid-innings mistake will be magnified out of all proportion.

The “winner-takes-all” concept may make for riveting entertainment, but it is not one that bears even a passing resemblance to fairness. And one of sport’s foremost attractions, for this observer, is that it dispenses justice with greater efficiency and regularity than any court of law. Or life in general.

So, good luck KP, Chris Gayle and company – may the best men win. But no, this is one armchair spectator who has no intention of watching.