Dreamtime, or how Sri Lanka will win the World Cup

For adults, watching cricket is a kind of schoolboy dreaming. It offers the possibility of perfect resolutions…not just a happy ending but a perfect happy ending, the sort that real life doesn't deliver. Actually, nor does cricket. But on the 24th, it did.

The Sri Lanka-New Zealand match wasn't a great one-day match, because it wasn't much of a contest, but for the spectator who'd picked the right side (like me) it was the most perfectly satisfying game to watch. Had this been one of Wodehouse's cricket stories, Mahela Jayawardene would have replaced Mike Jackson and the book would have been called Mahela at Wrykyn which doesn't sound as snappy as the original (Mike at Wrykyn) but it'll do.

Our hero, Mahela, is sitting in his study pencilling in the team for the match against Wrykyn's rival school, Sedleigh. Jayasuriya to open: that's a no-brainer, but Tharanga? Not only is he in a junior form but lots of the prefects are backing Atapattu who's a fine bat, a senior man in the Sixth, who had skippered the team before Mahela replaced him, so the team sheet is a tricky business. But Mahela holds his nerve and pencils in Tharanga's name.

The next day the cricket match goes like a Boy's Own Paper fantasy. Mahela wins the toss and makes the right call, to bat. Tharanga repays Mahela's confidence by scoring an aggressive fifty that gives the innings momentum despite early wickets. When he falls, MJ's in first gear, but by the time Wrykyn's innings ends, he's smacking Sedleigh's fast men to all parts. Just think of it: Mahela calls right, backs the right man and scores an unbeaten century at faster than a run a ball to set up a massive win.

The reason Wodehouse didn't write this novel is because he specialized in plausible school stories centred on cricket and this one's plot line was too good to be true. There's no conflict, no tension, and Mahela walks on water. But you know what? Fans are coarse spectators: they'll take all the good news they can get.

And listen, I've been thinking about the final. Ponting wins the toss and puts Sri Lanka in on a fast Barbadian track. Big mistake. Jayasuriya and Sanagakkara failed at the right time, the match before. So they're due big scores and they get them. Then Tharanga and Mahela fool everyone by beating the odds and doing it all over again. Lightning strikes twice, Atlantis surfaces and McGrath goes for 60 in eight overs. 289 for 2 this time. By the time the innings ends, it's past my bedtime and I sleep through Murali and Malinga's Punch and Judy show. When I wake up in the morning, they've won.