Professional sport is all about striving to be the best, to climb the rankings to top the table, to lift the trophy, to be photographed with champagne coming out of your nostrils whilst waving a small brown receptacle at posterity.

But although we enjoy watching the top teams trying to win things, it is in the desperate scrap to avoid failure and ignominy that most entertainment can be found.

Unfortunately, after a run of increasingly hilarious defeats - the cricket equivalent of watching a slapstick comedian repeatedly slip and fall on the same banana skin - England spoiled our fun by beating Sri Lanka, and even earned the bonus of having Alastair Cook banned from the next one-day international for thinking too slowly.

So since England have started dabbling in competence, we are in need of a new candidate for worst professional cricket team in the world. Step forward Guyana.

Cricket has always had great potential for hilarity. There are the silly names for fielding positions, the undignified poses that slip fielders, batsmen and bowlers are obliged to adopt, not to mention all that messing about with umbrellas, waving of arms and bursts of strangled shouting. Stop any village cricket match at any stage and it will invariably look like the beginning of a Monty Python sketch.

But aside from Merv Hughes' run-up there is nothing funnier in cricket than the batting collapse. Not all collapses are equal. Collapses in pursuit of an impossible target are nowhere near as funny as watching a team falling in a heap chasing a total that Chris Gayle could get on his own before he's properly warmed up.

Last Monday, Guyana put on an exhibition of the collapsing arts that deserves to applauded, a show that combined the madcap thrills of the late unexpected collapse with the high comedy pratfalls of the early, panic-stricken slump.

Chasing a daunting 69 to win, they set about their task methodically, carefully losing their first four wickets to lay the wonky foundations of a hilarious failure. But then they got bogged down in a spell of run-scoring, and at 50 for 5 they were staring down the barrel of a routine victory. The loss of Rajindra Chandrika was the wake-up call they needed and they surrendered their last four wickets for nine runs to pull off a remarkable defeat.

No calamity of this nature is complete without some comedy excuses and coach Esuan Crandon fell back on a couple of old favourites: the bowler was unplayable, and the pitch was an absolute minefield.

"It was a difficult fourth-day wicket to bat on. There was wear and tear, uneven bounce, ball keeping low, very low."

That sounds plausible, until you discover that the bowler was Dwayne Smith, and that, according to match referee Reon King, there was nothing whatsoever wrong with the surface.

"The pitch is fine. It was a normal four-day pitch. In my opinion it was just a collapse in batting."

Not quite, Reon. It wasn't just a collapse. It was a great collapse. So, for remembering, despite their contractual obligation to try to win things, that they are primarily in the entertainment business, and that nothing is more entertaining than spontaneous second innings combustion, batsmen of Guyana, we salute you.