JUST NOT CRICKET TO CONJURE A RESULT

STRANGE that there are those who attend sport, love sport, yet still don’t appreciate that sport has rules. Yes, it was hugely inconvenient and disappointing that England were not allowed to beat South Africa on Sunday night, and to fall 33 runs short while scoring at a rate of 5.7 per over upset many. Another six overs would have done it. Yet the umpires took a reading before coming off for bad light on Saturday, and that then stands as the mark for the rest of the Test. Imagine if they had played on, England had won, and then it had rained all day yesterday. South Africa would, rightly, have said they were denied a drawn Test and therefore a drawn series. Nobody could know, for certain, that there would be play on the final day. South Africa had to be given their chance to get lucky. It is not for the umpires to manufacture a result.

That is what happened at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix last year and it cost Lewis Hamilton his record-breaking eighth drivers’ championship. On Sunday, Max Verstappen won in Monza behind a safety car to the fury of all, with Hamilton wondering why last season’s finale was the first and only time F1 has veered from its rules.

He has a point. All sides sign up to a set of protocols before the start and it cannot just be that these get randomly altered to manufacture a spectacle. What happened at the Oval wasn’t crowd pleasing; but it was most certainly sporting.