Spectators' day out

Twenty20 is simply the descendant of the game played by Medes and Persians. Man throws a ball, another man hits the ball with a stick, runs around a marker and scores a notch! — and the team registering most notches wins the contest. Simple! In this regard, however, it is worth remembering that democratisation can make a sport too coarse — or too lacking in the refinements which underlined an innings by Tendulkar or a spell by Bishan Singh Bedi.

After all, in the words of the poet Dryden, one should not blindly accept popular standards simply because they are those accepted by the majority. As Dryden wrote: “The most may err, as grossly as the few.”