Should sportspersons love to win or hate to lose?

So accustomed, even inured, have we become to all the sex 'n drugs 'n corruption polluting Planet Sport, it takes something truly awful to turn shrugged shoulders into collective grief. Thus it was with the death, amid the World T20's spiffing splendours, of arguably the greatest of all European ballplayers, Johan Cruyff. A competitive artist who, as the ever-insightful Richard Williams put it in the Guardian, gave us "football from another planet… as reimagined by a master choreographer assigned to strip it down, discard the rusted and outmoded components and reconstruct it in a way that was not just more aesthetically pleasing but more lethally and unanswerably efficient".

Ah, but had financial reward and a higher life not been spurs, would we still have wallowed in the same breathtaking skills from the Amsterdammer whose first trial with Ajax only came about because his mother worked there as a cleaner? It is the sporting variation on the chicken-and-egg question. This column once posed it to another enriching competitor, David Gower, who assured it that giving pleasure always ran second to winning.

In his tribute to Cruyff for the Times, Matthew Syed consulted the work of academic researchers, none of whom, it should be noted, had actually studied sportsfolk. One group concluded - apparently proving Daniel Pink's "paradox of creativity" - that it was "those who are least motivated to pursue extrinsic rewards who eventually receive them". Truly visionary leaders, Syed added, "inspire precisely because they articulate an ambition that transcends the profit and loss". Cue the inevitable homage to the late Steve Jobs, who, as the recent biopic, biography and documentary about him all stressed, inspired chiefly by intimidation and ridicule.

So let's turn the question inside out: what is the most useful habit a professional sportsperson can inherit and/or develop? Addiction to the dizzying, crystal meth-ian "I'm the bee's bloody knees" rush of victory? Or addiction to the paranoia and fear that can fuel a soul-blinding loathing of defeat? Let's leave the answer to Jim Brosnan, a relatively unheralded baseballer who found a second career as a writer.

Brosnan was not only a pretty good pitcher, at his best with the Cincinnati Reds; he was also a cultured, intellectual loner widely held to be responsible for the first confessional, warts n' all sporting autobiography, The Long Season, published in 1960. Having recovered from a stuttering start to his major league career with the Chicago Cubs, he asked one of his minor league managers why he had stuck with him. Don Osborn said he was confident Brosnan had an arm worth persisting with but was less certain about his head and heart. "He was right," Brosnan conceded. "I wasn't driven to be a professional baseball player. By 1958 I began to hate to lose at pitching; I hated it even when somebody got a hit off me. The competitive urge finally came to me."

Whatever the balance between nature and nurture, can we seriously doubt that Steve Waugh, for one, detested failure more than he savoured success? Or that, for reasons of racial pride, the same can be said of Viv Richards? After Andre Russell had pummelled his own submissive offering into Mumbai's crestfallen stands, Virat Kohli's reaction affirmed that the same is true of him.

Even after the producer left that stony countenance to focus cameras on the Caribbean exultations, when they returned not a muscle or hair had twitched. Defeat, it seemed, had frozen him in self-disgust. May such self-possessed impassivity serve him well once he has walked a few more miles in Sachin's shoes.

He might also heed the war cry of Antonio Conte, the new Chelsea manager. Upon joining Juventus, whom he would lead from the doldrums to a hat-trick of Serie A titles, he kept it simple: "Lads," he began when introduced to the squad. "It's time we stopped being shit."

Darren Sammy Motivation Award:
Darren Sammy - "We felt disrespected by our board."

Darren Sammy Motivate the Opposition Award:
Darren Sammy - "God don't love the ugly."

Shane Warne-Steve Waugh Love Thy Nemesis Award:
Marlon Samuel - "This is for Shane Warne."

WARNING: Please skip this section if you are inclined to take offence at any attempt to ask a legitimate question about a sensitive subject. Still here? Well, during the first World T20 semi-final double-header, this column bumped into Mark Perryman, a colleague and sportswriter-cum-academic-cum-political activist who has toiled long and hard to combat prejudice on our fields of dreams. "I see the women are getting some proper promotion," he bubbled, the grin radiating both surprise and glee. "That's a great idea to get them playing as a prelude to the men."

It seemed a mighty long way from that afternoon in 1997 when Karen Smithies, who had led England to improbable triumph at the 1993 World Cup, shared her joy at the national team's acquisition of its first major sponsor. "For the first time," she said, still pinching herself, "we haven't had to stump up for our own gear."

Time was when competitors in a major women's tournament could be gently patronised without causing outrage (though hearing male journalists persistently assume they were all lesbians was never less than nauseating). Happily, those days are long gone, though it would be unappreciative not to point out that the victorious West Indies squad numbered, gloriously, a Shamilia, a Shemaine and even a Shaquana. No stand over the past four weeks stirred this column's soul so rousingly as the opening alliance in the final between Hayley Matthews and Stafanie "Helmets are for cissies" Taylor. Of all the strokes unfurled, moreover, none matched Meg Lanning's turf-hugging cover drive - a welcome antidote to the prevailing brutality.

Still, knowing Mark Robinson as this column does, its heart went out to the admirable former Sussex coach when he was asked to explain why England had capsized in the semi-final against Australia. That avuncular smile lingered far longer than it ought to have done in the circumstances, but eventually, understandably, it yielded to a somewhat tight-lipped acknowledgement: since his players were now proper professionals earning decent dosh, Something Must Be Done - Very Urgently - About The Fielding. The key to progress, in other words, lies in athleticism, i.e. training and fitness.

Allegations of sexism should be resisted. Robinson, after all, was merely echoing the sentiments of another hardy male pro, Mike Hendrick, who was coaching the strictly amateur Irish men's team against the Australians in 1997 when he revealed his exasperation with fielding standards: "I knew when I came here I'd have to work at the batting and bowling, but not the throwing."

There is, nonetheless, another elephant in the room: where are all the sixes? Given that the women smacked 43 in the World T20, roughly 15% of the menfolk's tally, is it ungentlemanly to propose that more assiduous muscle-enhancement might be in order, thus facilitating the ability to flex and manoeuvre a brick-thick bat? Alternatively, why not bring in the boundaries further?

Similar distinctions, after all, are made in other sports. Women golfers still tee off closer to the green; in playing best-of-three sets to the men's best-of-five while competing for the same prize money in Grand Slams, women tennis players get paid at a better hourly rate. But that's another nest of spitting cobras.

Time for a new stat? How about Bullseyes? Simply add wickets to dot-balls, awarding, respectively, two points and one apiece. On that basis, the World T20's most effective bowlers were Mohammad Nabi and Rashid Khan (91 and 89 points respectively from seven games), followed by Samuel Badree (86 in six), Andre Russell (80) and David Willey (75). If nothing else, that might explain why 1) West Indies won, and 2) their sole conquerors were Afghanistan.

Speaking of revealing numbers, consider the division of labours among the England squad since last year's World Cup eff-up. Those who have played the most Tests during that span - Joe Root, Ben Stokes (17), Moeen Ali (16) and Joe Buttler (12) - were also among their sharpest World T20 weapons (even if that means conveniently pretending Stokes' last four balls in Kolkata never happened). Another poke in the eye - along with the new-found wonders of the full toss - for received wisdom.

We Poms are allergic to boasting. Posher vocabulary, clearer diction and sardonic understatement are the trusty ingredients when it comes to reaffirming our ancient superiority complex. Besides, in these guilt-ridden postcolonial times, even our politicians don't relish being loathed by foreigners anymore. Why else would they maintain a unilateral, cross-party stance on CO2 emissions and thus wreck our own steel industry?

Then again, there are some occasions when we are entitled to polish our self-regard, and what with the national rugby union team having been crowned European champions last month, the f***ballers fancying their chances of emulation after bopping the world champions in Berlin, and now our cricketers defying their traditional fusty image as never before, resisting the temptation to crow, even in defeat, is quite frankly impossible.

So, with profuse and almost sincere apologies to the authors of "C'mon Aussie, C'mon"…