“I was beginning to wonder if I should send out a search party,” says Cindy, as we arrive at the White House B&B in Newnham, to the east of Baldock. “Where have you two walked from, again?”

“Cambridge. But that’s not the half of it,” I say, remembering Cindy’s response – “Goodness, that was not what I was expecting!!” – to my explanation for not being able to be more specific with regards to when we might arrive.

“This is Day One of ten,” adds Rob. “We’re walking to Cardiff.”

I never got tired of the look on people’s faces.

“Why?” asks Cindy.

It’s a question I still can’t answer.

***

It’s Day Ten. Somewhere to the west of Newport, Rob and I are approaching our 200th mile. I ask if he remembers the genesis of the idea to walk to Cardiff. Memories are hazy, but at some point – in the Autumn? Over Christmas? New Year’s Eve? – there was talk of how nobody calls on anybody anymore. Wouldn’t it be funny if we called on Tom and asked if he wanted to come out and play? If he fancied a pint in his pub, The Lansdowne?

I fish my phone out of my pocket, scrolling back through our WhatsApp chat. It only goes back to October, when I got a new phone, but here we go:

Most people assumed we were doing it for charity. Maybe we should have been, but the truth was that we weren’t. We didn’t need the commitment device. Walking to Cardiff appealed to our sense of the epic and the absurd, and we were doing it because we could. That’s could in the sense that we had permission – Gemma, Rob’s wife, granting him ten days leave.Whether we could physically – well, there was only one way to find out.

Rewind four years, and the idea of walking anywhere would have seemed impossible. The simple task of putting on socks and shoes was enough to bring a tear to the eye. I’d had back trouble before, but this was serious. My body was beyond hope, and my mind was all too ready to agree. What did it say about my life when I had always taken the view that fitness – like a suntan – is a by-product of doing something more interesting? I’ll run after a ball or to score a run, but I can’t Go For A Run. Not without a voice in my head screaming this is boring and painful. Likewise, I’ve never been to a gym in my life. Life is repetitive enough without lifting things up and running on a treadmill. But I couldn’t play football or cricket to get fit, as an abortive net session confirmed, and I couldn’t even ride my bike. I was stuck in this miserable debilitating existence – until, that is, I started walking.

Rob can also attest to the power of a daily walk in the struggle against bad backs, but neither of us had done anything like this. I’d discovered the step counter on my phone during a month in India in 2016, and become mildly obsessed with it in the summer of 2018, when walking off my bad back. Time to rekindle that obsession. The daily step counts went up, but we really needed a training day. Three more followed in the next couple of months, but that first training day in early February – a 22-mile circular walk along the Roman Road and Fleam Dyke – proved that we could do it. With T-Man along for the ride, we learnt some vital lessons along the way: waterproof shoes would be useful; lunchtime pints less so; there is no such thing as a bad biscuit; the last mile is the hardest.

***

It’s late on Day Two. My feet are on fire, but I’ll be fine once I’ve taken a load off. That pint of Guinness is going to taste so good. I’ll be a new man after a shower, a square meal and a good night’s kip. I’m getting ahead of myself – which is precisely why the last mile is the hardest. To be fair, the preceding six miles – skirting along the very edge of Luton – haven’t been that easy. Look to the left and it’s a housing/industrial estate. Look down and it’s fly-tipping and dog tod. A soundtrack of traffic drone, the M1 getting ever closer. All this, and a Friday night in Dunstable as an incentive.

There’s been nowhere to sit down and take a break for ages, so – just a mile or so from our destination – we decide to stop at Houghton Hall Park. We’re nearly there when I feel the unmistakeable hot squelch of a blister bursting on the bottom of the little toe of my right foot. A fear grips me. I couldn’t quit, could I? Not in Dunstable. Not after just two days. This was never a competition between us, but a part of me is thinking: I can’t lose to Rob. Not Rob, the least competitive and least sporty person I know. Not Rob, who had sat in his car smoking B&H while the rest of us played football, the first time I met him.

The first day had seemed so easy. Sure, the bags we were carrying were a reminder that we would have to get up and do this all again for another nine tomorrows, but there was the sense – exacerbated by the unremarkable and somewhat familiar route – that this was one last training day. With Rich providing welcome company (T-Man having succumbed to a positive Covid test), it felt like we were deferring the moment that Rob and I embarked on our adventure.

A day later and shit had got real.

***

Shit had seemed very abstract back in the planning days. We had somewhere to stay in Oxford – Tom’s dad’s place – and a pretty good idea of the route, thanks to the online discovery of Ordnance Survey maps for a ‘Varsity March’ from Oxford to Cambridge in 2015. The Cambridge University Ramblers Club did the 81 miles in a weekend, but – going by Rob’s calculations – we could do the reverse journey in four days. We could then follow the Thames Trail and, once over the border – the old Severn Bridge catered for pedestrians – we could take up the Wales Coastal Path. Even when we had booked accommodation, it was just names on a map. Newnham, Dunstable, Aylesbury, Oxford, Radcot, Cricklade, Didmarton, Aust, Newport, Cardiff. Easy to trace a finger over a screen, but could we walk the walk?

***

The last mile is the hardest, but we make it – thanks to a change of footwear on my part – to our accommodation in Dunstable. Slumped on a step as Rob checks us in, I don’t care that I stink. I’m too tired to worry about how incongruous I must look to all these people, or to wonder what event they’re attending. The strange alchemy of the end of a day’s walk has yet to kick in. Fatigue has yet to mix with relief and satisfaction, but a catalyst is to hand in the form of a doppelgänger for our friend Matt. A shower and that pint of Guinness help, too.

We’re staying at the Old Palace Lodge, which is neither old nor palatial, but one out of three is enough for us weary travellers. It’s a reminder that this is an adventure, that we can never know what’s round the next corner. You can imagine what Dunstable on a Friday might be like, but until you’ve walked past a bouncer outside an empty pub, you can’t know. Not until you’ve discovered that everybody – for good reason – is crammed into Lumpini Thai Restaurant.

After two days on the road and two years of Covid restrictions, it’s slightly unnerving to be surrounded by so many people. But it’s Covid that’s brought us here, really. After all, if it hadn’t been for my experiences on the retail frontline during the pandemic, I’d most likely still be stuck in the same old boring job. Those fraught first few months of Lockdown were exhausting. It wasn’t just the physical labour of serving a never-ending (socially distanced) queue of people needing their five a day, it was being in a state of hyper-awareness – alert to every breath and every touch – that made it so tiring. But on the other hand, it was energising. I had a purpose. There was value and meaning to be had – even pride – in selling fruit and veg. I was a Key Worker. Doing the same job that had often left me wondering why I was getting paid to do the crossword and listen to Test Match Special. As much as a return to normality would have come as welcome relief from the new normal, I knew I couldn’t go back. After all, I’d only agreed to work in the shop for a fortnight, while I looked for a Proper Job. Getting on for twenty years later, I sold what I told myself would be my last ever Christmas tree. I thought of Steve Redgrave – “I’ve had it. If anyone sees me near a boat, they can shoot me” – and wondered if I was a man of my word. The conviction endured – hardened, even, over the harsh winter Lockdown – and last July, with the world opening up, I told my boss I was leaving. With three months notice, I was getting out before the shop went back to self-service and before the clocks went back. I’d get to enjoy Christmas. I’d get to go fully nocturnal and watch the Ashes. I’d get to enjoy the privilege of not having to work, of taking the time to work out what I might want to do next. I’d get to … walk to Cardiff.

***

I thought I’d broken in my walking boots. Sure, they’d given me blisters to start with, but that was months ago. I’d walked miles since then with no issue. The trainers were an afterthought, the last thing I packed. Them or slippers – something comfortable to wear in the evenings. Thank goodness I made the right choice. And eternal thanks to my brother for introducing me to the world of Compeed blister plasters. There’s goodness in those little aquamarine boxes. But they’re hard to come by on a Saturday morning in Dunstable. We’re keen to get going – have been since getting woken up at four a.m. by sex people in a neighbouring room – but Boots in the Quadrant Shopping Centre doesn’t open til nine. Doesn’t open at nine, either, and it’s a pretty bleak place to be waiting. We find another pharmacy and I get my early morning Compeed hit, sitting on a bench outside the police station. I want arresting, but I’m good to go.

Sometimes you have to moan,

when nothing seems to suit ya

Nevertheless you know,

you’re locked towards the future

So on and on you go,

the seconds tick the time out

There’s so much left to know,

and I’m on the road to find out

On the Road to Find Out, Cat Stevens

Any illusions I had about this being a holiday have disappeared. This is a mission. A mission I now have a burning desire to complete. The fire in my feet has spread, a spark has ignited something in me. Rob and I have both subsequently read Trespassing Across America by Ken Ilgunas, the book Rob carried to Cardiff, and the following description of an Alaskan (mis)adventure rang a bell: “Such unpleasantness can function as a restorative distraction, a resuscitating shock, a defibrillator charge to the soul.”

As if to mock me for my hubris, my toe’s path for most of Day Three will be the towpath of the Grand Union Canal. Still, the going is firm, the weather glorious. We’ve survived Dunstable and – at a mere eighteen miles – this is one of the shorter days. It’s mad to think that this quiet waterway, this feat of engineering with its series of locks and bridges, could have ever played such a significant role in the history of the world. Even this branch that goes to Aylesbury, our home for the night and another place we know nothing about. Rob asks the young lad on reception at the Travelodge for a recommendation on where to go for a drink. It isn’t clear whether his response – “I don’t really go out” – is a reflection on him or his town. We settle on Wagamama. Afterwards, eating vending machine ‘bed dessert’, watching Eurovision, we could be anywhere. But we’re not. We’re in Aylesbury, and we’ve walked for three days to get here.

A slight hitch in Hitchin aside, navigation has thus far been relatively straightforward. Day Four – the long slog to Oxford – is about to change all that. It could have been worse. I’ve already discovered, wading through chest-high cow parsley, that what my trainers make up for in comfort, they lack in waterproofness. Now there’s a metal fence barring our path, a map giving directions for a three mile diversion. Before we have time to contemplate our fate, a dog walker on a bike tells us of a hole in the fence. “Follow me,” he says. What does it say about modern life that these experiences, when a stranger is trusted explicitly, are so rare? And what does my trepidation, however slight, say about me? Still, a lesson in the kindness of strangers is a nice way to re-up my faith in humanity, and we’re relieved to be back on track.

A public footpath is a wonderful thing. A rare public asset in an increasingly private and privatised world. But some are more public than others. Some are permissive paths, dependent on landowners for maintenance. It’s a task that some landowners take more seriously than others. Like in the fields around the Buckinghamshire village of Shabbington, where the landowner has chosen to make every gate different, its own bespoke puzzle. It’s like being in Taskmaster. More generally, there’s usually a signpost pointing the way, but sometimes there’s no semblance of a path. Which brings us to Junction 8a of the M40. It’s been a long day, and we’ve already had to dig out the waterproofs for the first time. The map says there should be a footpath that takes us through a field and then under a bridge. Sure enough, there’s the signpost. Down these stairs. These stairs, overgrown with brambles, that nobody has used in a long time. There’s no sign of a path across the field, but in the far corner there’s the bridge. A bridge, it turns out, with knee high slurry and a gate barring our way. Our only option is to trudge back through the soggy crops and try to cross the dual carriageway. We make it across, but the sight of cars driving towards Oxford on the A418 is enough to get Rob thinking about ordering a cab.

***

“Well done,” says Gemma, dropping me home the day after we arrived in Cardiff. The return journey has been somewhat easier, it has to be said. “And thanks for putting up with my husband,” she adds.

“Thanks,” I reply. “And well done, you, for coping without him. I know I couldn’t have done it without him.”

“Likewise, pal,” says Rob. “Without you, I’d still be halfway up a hill outside Oxford.”

***

There’s no proof that we didn’t get a cab. Rob’s AllTrails app wasn’t just a handy navigation aid – it also mapped our journey. The map for Day Four is incomplete, the red snake doesn’t reach the blue dot. Only Rob and I know why. Only Rob knows how close his own battery was to running out halfway up that hill, as his phone had done. And I’ll never know how I managed to find my inner Mr Motivator. The truth resides in our calf muscles and our hearts, but we made it. Up the hill, across Shotover Country Park and down Shotover Hill into Oxford.

We’re due to join the Thames Trail on Day Five, but that can wait. Firstly, for some emergency early morning podiatry on a bench on Magdalen Bridge, and then because we can cut a corner. By this point, we’re more concerned with how the crow flies than with how the river cuts its meandering course. We join the Thames after crossing a courseway over Farmoor Reservoir. But not for long, it turns out. The Thames Trail instead cuts across fields full of flighty sheep, where we realise we have walked one hundred miles. There’s a pub where the path rejoins the Thames. We’ll have to have a celebratory drink. Outside. Because the Ferryman Arms is not the idyllic riverside pub of our imaginations. It’s more of a caravan park-side pub, and judging by the signage, not very tourist-friendly. It’s my round. In terms of decor and ambience, my only frame of reference will only make sense to anyone who went to the Master Mariner on Perne Road in Cambridge in the late 90s.

Still, we’re seeing the river at its spring best. After the morning’s lambs, it’s now ducklings and goslings. Surrounded by so much vitality, it’s hard not to feel alive. This is the bit of the walk that I’d been looking forward to most, and the wilderness is every bit as beautiful as I’d imagined. But for all that, it soon becomes a bit monotonous. No real landmarks, nothing to aim for on the horizon. Just the next gate, the next field – another million buttercups dancing in the wind. With the yellow flowers and the blue sky, it’s like walking through a giant Ukrainian flag – the river acting as a flagpole.

Perhaps, rather than the countryside, it’s the walking itself that is monotonous. Maybe the hundred mile mark came with a realisation that we’re only approaching the half way point. We stop for a soft drink at the Maybush in Newbridge. It’s quite the contrast to the Ferryman. Noticing the popularity of the food, we decide to have a late lunch. Back underway, Rob lightens the mood by digging out his speaker. He also manages to drop his Thames Trail guidebook in the Thames. Not on purpose, but it soon turns out – when I discover Rob had sent me pictures of all the maps – that it wouldn’t have been a hindrance to our progress if he had. The Thames Trail is well signposted, in any case. Walking through clouds of mayflies, hissed at by protective geese, and picking our way through a field filled with a truly hallucinatory amount of cows, we make our way to Radcot.

Ye Olde Swan in Radcot – with its log fire, interesting and interested locals – is a great pub. With the caveat that I might not be at my most objective, it also has an excellent pint of Guinness. But it doesn’t serve food on Mondays. Good job we had that late lunch. And good job our Air B&B host – a mile down the road – has put out stuff for breakfast in advance. Cereal, crumpets, a massive sour dough loaf. And there’s a biscuit tin, too, with the following written on the lid: ‘If you feel something is missing in life then it is almost always a biscuit’ They saw us coming. In the morning, my feet don’t want to leave. Bathroom tiles have never felt so cooling, carpet has never felt so luxuriant.

***

Talking to friends after it was all over, a common question has been whether we ran out of chat. The answer is yes, at times, inevitably. But Rob and I have never been ones for small talk, so the silence was always companionable. Besides, walking over new ground brings its own distractions and stimuli, its own absorption. And when it’s shared, sometimes nothing needs to be said. Seeing is enough, experiencing is enough. 

That said, there’s a sense on Day Six that we have seen enough of the Thames, so listening to Flight of the Concords comes as welcome relief. As does a much shorter day, meaning we arrive at The Old Bear in Cricklade at 5:30 – a good two hours earlier than we had reached Radcot, and about ten minutes before it starts raining. Timing. It turns out 5:30 on a Tuesday is a good time to enter a pub, looking windswept and interesting. The old boys enjoying an afternoon pint or two are keen to know what we’re up to, and tip us off that the Red Lion is the place to eat. They’re not wrong. ‘Never trust a skinny chef’ reads a sign near the kitchen, and this chef must be a big old boy/girl. The quantity is matched by the quality, and after three courses we can barely walk. Or finish our pints back at The Old Bear, where we are staying in a converted stable.

“Excuse me. They’re scared of you.”

They are two horses and, according to one of the middle-aged ladies walking them, it’s Rob and I that are scary.

She tries to explain: “Hiding in the bushes. With those bags on your backs, and that hat.”

This hat? This wide-brimmed cricket hat? This is a horse-scaring hat? And besides, we weren’t hiding. We were debating whether to take that public footpath, mindful that we don’t want to get our feet wet.

“Sorry,” says Rob. “Are we right in thinking this road goes to Minety?” he asks, more in the hope of learning how to pronounce the name of the Wiltshire village than how to get there.

“Minety?” – it rhymes with ninety – “No, you want to go back that way.”

Thanking them for their help, we wait until they’re out of scaring range. Consulting his phone, Rob confirms that we’ve been sold a lie. We proceed along the same road, some fifty yards behind the horses. The road turns into a path, at which point the horse ladies stop before turning their steeds around, heading back the way they came. I take off my hat and make a point of giving them a wide berth, as we take the path. The path that leads to Minety. Quite why we couldn’t have been told that twenty minutes ago is unclear.

From Minety we stick to roads, stopping for lunch in Malmesbury. Time to check on those feet. It’s been a week since that first blister. Safely covered under a couple of Compeeds, that little piggy is probably on the mend – could probably be peeled liked a banana. But he was just the start. As was the equivalent on my left foot. Other toes have had to take up the strain. The second runtiest pig on my right foot, in particular. It’s Day Seven, and Rob is also now suffering.

Back on Day Three we had enjoyed a couple of beers at the Red Lion in Marsworth, discovering that it’s impossible to tear open a bag of crisps if you think about it. Try it, next time you’re sharing a bag in the pub. You’ll be surprised how much thoughts can get in the way of acts. It’s the same with walking. Starting again is difficult, and the sight of two middle-aged men trying to remember how to walk must make for an odd spectacle. But once we remember which bits of our feet to avoid landing on, a rhythm can be achieved. Walking becomes as much of a conscious act as breathing. Life is just a process of getting over your self, and there’s something about the meditative act of putting one foot in front of the other that quietens the mind. Is it mindfulness or mindlessness? Whatever, self-consciousness can’t keep up.

Clocking in at nearly twenty-six miles, it’s a long day, but we make it to Didmarton. As per the previous night, we’re staying at a pub and we arrive just before the rain. There are worse places to take shelter than The King’s Arms. Only two courses tonight, though.

Back at our digs, we watch Prince of Muck, a documentary about the Scottish island of Muck and its owners, the McEwen family. It’s being repeated because the star of the show, Lawrence McEwen, has recently passed away. There’s a poignant scene towards the end when the elderly Lawrence, walking slowly back to the farmhouse, is overtaken by his son – now in charge of the family farm – on a quad bike. 

The following day, as we make our way to Aust services, where the Travelodge in which we’re staying is located, the scene comes back to me. Unless you’re Alan Partridge singing Goldfinger, motorway services aren’t designed to be reached on foot. Aust, where the old Severn Bridge will take us to Wales, is no different. I’ve never been a fan of cars, but after eight days of walking, they feel like an affront to the natural pace of things, a breach of the peace.

It’s an observation I could have made first thing in the morning, as we trudged beside the A433 out of Didmarton. But I’d been more concerned with wet feet, a cracking headache and the fact that I’d been sick. If the verges of Aust are a reminder that the last mile is the hardest, this morning was the exception to another rule. The first five miles are the easiest. Most days, the discovery that we’d done five miles comes as a shock. Already? But Day Eight wasn’t most days.

Aust Travelodge is euphemistically called Severn View, but Car Park Vista might be more appropriate. It’s Rob’s turn to buy dinner. Service station tapas from a choice of Costa, Burger King and WH Smith. I don’t know if I’m more disappointed in myself or the Chicken Royale meal. There’s a chance I might be sick again – with self-disgust. I jest, because I actually feel like a new man. Have done since Hawkesbury Upton, and the moment I noticed a cracking name on the village war memorial. Herbert J Niblett. Patron Saint of hangover cures. Shortbread has never tasted so good. Water has never been so refreshing. Ibuprofen has never kicked in so quickly. Is it me, or are my feet on the mend?

Bookended by unpleasantness, it’s actually been a great day. Sunshine. Two episodes of the Adam Buxton Podcast. A pub lunch in Tytherington. Our first glimpse of the Severn Bridge. This response from a pharmacist in Alveston: “I don’t even know where Cambridge is, but it sounds a long way away.”

Feels it, too. And Cardiff, just over the bridge, is still two days away.

“Breakfast,” says Rob, handing me a cardboard box he’s collected from reception. It’s a far cry from this time last week, when we were sitting down to Cindy’s cooked breakfast. We’ve come a long way since then, and it’s taken its toll. Most obviously on our feet, but Rob has woken up with a rash all across his back. Heat rash from eight days of carrying a sweaty rucksack. Mindful of wanting to arrive in Cardiff with enough energy to celebrate, we talk of maybe getting a train to Newport.

In typical drizzle, we cross one Severn Bridge and go under the other, winding our way along the coast to Caldicot. We’ve walked to Wales. No shame in getting a train. We’ll still break two-hundred miles by the time we get to Cardiff. No shame in that. The shame would have to wait.

No regrets, then, but it’s still possible to think what we might do differently if we had to walk to Cardiff again. Apart from be preemptive with the Compeeds, that is. And get a comfier bag.  Rob and I came to the conclusion that fifteen miles is the perfect distance for a day’s walk. Long enough without being too long, and with more scope to explore. Which brings us to Newport. It doesn’t do any good to think of all the beautiful and interesting places we have hurried through or passed obliviously by. It’s Newport where we’re suddenly blessed with all this time. A place left behind by time. Post-industrial, post-Brexit, post-Covid. Pre-what, though? Levelling up? Yeah, right.

On top of the rash, Rob’s ear is now bleeding. But it’s okay, because we’re sitting in what he has termed a Haven of Shame. We’d later have dinner at another – Wagamama – but for now we’re sitting outside a Starbucks in a retail park. It’s easy to see how people fall for the safety and familiarity of multinational companies. I used to think it was down to a lack of imagination, but now I’m thinking the opposite might also be true. Perhaps sticking with what you know is down to imagining the worst in what you don’t know. In that spirit, Rob decides that he hasn’t got Walking Plague – he’s just scratched a bite.

“I wanna be a flair barman, see. Serving cocktails at some kind of super club.”

Well, you have to start somewhere, I suppose. Under the shadow of Newport Transporter Bridge, the Grade 2 listed Waterloo Hotel is under new management and our barkeep – a Sikh lad from Swansea – is the owner’s son, looking after the place for the weekend. As far as we can tell, we’re the only patrons. We’re certainly the only people in the bar, and our days of going to super clubs are over.

There was never a time when Rob and I fell out of step, no morning when one was waiting impatiently for the other. And Day Ten, when we leave Newport at 6:45, is no different. We’ve worked out that stopping for lunch after half way is the way to go, but at this rate – a pace not seen since Day One – we’ll be in Cardiff by lunchtime.

We throw off our bags, by now consisting almost exclusively of dirty clothes, and slump to the ground. It may not be apparent to any onlookers, but they are triumphant slumps to the ground. We’re in Bute Park, the Welsh flag flies proudly from Cardiff Castle. Rob passes me a can of Guinness. Cheers. A quiet half hour before we head to the Lansdowne, a last half hour together as comrades, as companions. None of this gets said, of course, because we’re ruddy bloody blokes, but I’ll miss it. I’ll miss having someone else to give a shit about. What is life, after all, but a journey shared?

It’s not the destination, it’s the journey. After walking roughly 210 miles across ten days and nine counties, we’re ready to accept it’s both. The Lansdowne doesn’t disappoint.

The celebrations carry on back at Tom and Cerys’ house. At some point late into the night, I can stay awake no longer. 

“Props,” says Tom.

He reads the grin that breaks across my face.

“You idiot,” he adds.

The grin was one of satisfaction, but it also spoke to the absurdity of walking from Cambridge to Cardiff.

“Idiot props,” I say. “I’ll take that.”

The deckchairs can be rearranged. An opener who averages 11.14 this year could come in. Or a middle order batsman who hasn’t scored a Test hundred for over three years could be recalled yet again – he could even keep wicket, replacing the other slightly flawed ‘keeper. Maybe 2-0 down is the time to pick the bowler who offers a genuine point of difference, or a spinner to take the burden off – checks notes – Joe Root, Dawid Malan and Ollie Robinson. But where’s the fun in that? And, quite frankly, what’s the point? England will still lose.

Much better – although equally futile, it must be said – to indulge in the fantasy of a parallel universe in which England rocked up to Australia with a team that might have been able to compete. This doesn’t have to be some kind of Utopia where cricket is on free-to-air TV and on the national curriculum, where English domestic cricket is played on pitches that encourage players to develop the skills required to succeed in Test cricket around the world. As welcome as all that would be, this fantasy only needs us to imagine that England had competent management.

First of all, imagine if England had a chief selector who wasn’t also the head coach. It doesn’t have to be Ed Smith, although some of his ideas – Jos Buttler and Adil Rashid as Test players, Malan being suited to Australian conditions – don’t look too radical now. And imagine if England had a captain who hadn’t had to learn on the job – or, if that’s impossible these days, a captain more suited to the job. A captain who knew how to get the best out of your once-in-a-generation fast bowler and leg-spinner. To be fair, imagine a captain who knew how to get the best out of any spinner.

Let’s go back to 2016. Imagine if Haseeb Hameed had been deemed to have done enough in India to not have to prove his form in county cricket. He could have five years of Test experience under his belt, this could have been his second Ashes tour. Or his hands could have been too low, and he could have joined the long list of those who have failed to fill Andrew Strauss’ boots. Either way, it would have been good to know.

It’s hard to escape the feeling that whatever the parallel universe, Rory Burns is still Rory Burns. But what if England had ignored the noise about strike rate and had the courage to stick with Dominic Sibley? After all, leaving the ball looks quite useful to Marnus Labuschagne and co. What if England had decided that Zak Crawley had the game to succeed in Australia, that his failures on Indian turners were no indication as to how he’d go at the MCG.

Imagine if England, in Tests, had got the best out of a talented generation of multi-format cricketers – as other nations manage to, it must be noted. Johnny Bairstow, Buttler, Moeen Ali, Chris Woakes and Rashid having unfulfilled Test careers doesn’t have to be inevitable collateral to white-ball success, does it?

There’s a parallel universe in which England stuck with Johnny Bairstow at number three after his last Test century in Sri Lanka in 2018. And maybe Ben Foakes keeps the gloves, too. Olly Stone is probably still injured, but imagine if England hadn’t broken Jofra Archer. Imagine an attack of Archer, Mark Wood, Rashid, Ben Stokes and one of Jimmy Anderson and Stuart Broad.

Oh, and there’s no pandemic in this parallel universe. Obviously. So Stokes wasn’t rushed back to captain a scratch ODI side. And Moeen didn’t get thrown under the bus, and Woakes didn’t get to stare at so many hotel walls. No, England are in fine fettle in this alternative reality. Happy Christmas.

There was a moment at the end of Azeem Rafiq’s DCMS appearance that summed up England’s unhealthy obsession with the Ashes. An MP – who had earlier confessed to not being a cricket fan – asked Rafiq for an Ashes prediction. Not now, mate.

Lunch on day one of the first Test. Having won the toss and chosen to bat first, England are 59-4. Simon Mann is introducing the lunchtime feature on TMS:

“Today is the culmination of meticulous planning to try and give the team the best possible chance to win in Australia. Over the last twelve months Jonathan Agnew has been given exclusive behind the scenes access to find out just what goes into preparing for an Ashes tour. The full series is available on BBC Sounds. We’ll bring you now a flavour of the programme on TMS this week. It’s called Project Ashes.”

Not now, mate.

“We’re prioritising the Ashes, going forward.” This is not a direct quote, but it’s not too difficult to imagine anyone associated with England saying it at any point in the last two years. Maybe it was Chris Silverwood in New Zealand, about to oversee his first Test series as head coach. The same series that Jofra Archer was asked to bowl 42 overs in an innings.

Going forward. Of all the management speak that has crept into sport, it might be the most annoying. Going forward – as opposed to going back?

There was a point, with it looking likely that Ben Stokes was going to miss another Ashes tour, when England appeared to be going back. Back to 2017/18 and the last trip down under. Back to Dawid Malan and Johnny Bairstow. Back to Jimmy Anderson and Stuart Broad, and a battery of right-arm seamers. Back to praying Mark Wood doesn’t break. Before he announced his retirement from Tests, it looked like back to Moeen Ali. Back to a familiar thrashing, and the even more familiar talk of learning lessons – of the need for top order runs and express pace, of the need for a spinner who could offer some control.

All that planning, and England went into the Gabba with a top three – Rory Burns, Haseeb Hameed, Malan – that had been installed for the first time as recently as two Tests ago. All that planning, and Chris Woakes took the new ball, Chris Woakes, who averaged 49.5 with the ball in 2017/18, and who played the sum total of one Test match in 2021. All that planning, and England went into the first Ashes Test with Jack Leach. Jack Leach, who couldn’t get a Test all summer. All that planning, and only three upgrades to the previous Ashes touring party: an underprepared Stokes, an injury-prone Wood, and an inexperienced Ollie Robinson.

All that planning, and England, having won the toss and chosen to bat, are 11-3. Future Ashes previews have just got a little longer. To the first-ball nightmares of Phil Defreitas in 1994 and Steve Harmison in 2006, we can now add Rory Burns in 2021. And to Nasser Hussain’s decision to field first in 2002, we can now add Root batting first in 2021. Nasser has never been able to live that one down, and it appears England captains can never again bowl first at the Gabba. If not now – when the pitch is green and there’s weather about, when batters on both sides have had precious little practice – then when? As for Burns, this was a sixth duck of the year.

11-3. Exit Joe Root, joining Burns in failing to add to his tally of Test runs in 2021. Enter Ben Stokes. First ball, and he’s advancing down the pitch, shouldering arms, allowing the ball through to the keeper. It remains to be seen if it has the same effect, but was there a touch of Kevin Pietersen in the first Test in 2005? Sure, he hadn’t deposited Glenn McGrath into the Lord’s pavilion, but this was a statement leave. He’s not taking a backward step. Dare it be said, he’s literally going forward. Who’s with him? Maybe, just maybe, this might not be the same old Ashes story. Watch enough cricket – stay up late enough – and you start to see what you want. Soon enough, Stokes is dismissed by Pat Cummins. All that planning, and England are 29-4.

For a while, as Hameed and Ollie Pope staged somewhat of a recovery up to lunch, it was possible to glimpse something new amid all the depressingly familiar tropes. A new England, without Anderson and Broad. A new cast, but the same old story. All that planning, and England are bundled out for 147.

Lunch on day two, after an extended session of two and a half hours in the Queensland heat. Australia are 113-1. Stokes, having taken the wicket of David Warner off a no ball, has done something to his knee. Leach has been taken for 31 from just three overs. Warner has ridden his luck, but Marnus Labuschagne has looked in ominously good form. This could get messy. Again. Time for the latest instalment of Project Ashes.

All that planning, and Burns is in the slips – dropping Warner off Robinson shortly after lunch. Another escape for Warner, after getting away from the toast that Broad had him on in 2019. That Broad wasn’t selected looks terrible in hindsight, but so too does the reluctance of England’s bowlers to bowl round the wicket to Warner – and Travis Head, for that matter.

Lunch on day three. Burns has avoided a pair, and England have made it to the break unbeaten. Just the 255 behind. “To say the least, this hasn’t been the start to an Ashes series that England were hoping for,” says Dan Norcross before introducing the third episode of Project Ashes.

There’s something about the roar of a crowd as the bowler runs in for the final ball of a day’s play. It’s enough to wake any fans who may have fallen asleep. Joe Root survives. Root’s still in – that’s got to be a good thing. And Malan’s still there. England are 220-2, just 35 in arrears. 2010, anyone? It wouldn’t be the Ashes without a bit of misplaced hope.

Still, at lunch on day four, with Australia having been set 20 to win, there was still time for Simon Mann to introduce one last airing of Project Ashes. “So, despite some optimism when play began this morning, England are on the verge of making a losing start to this Ashes series. Not what they were hoping for after so much work went into planning for this tour.”

All that planning, and England lose the Test by nine wickets. If this is prioritising the Ashes …

Perhaps, in an age of relentless multi-format scheduling, it’s unrealistic to think England can prioritise the Ashes. Perhaps they shouldn’t, anyway. Perhaps England would be better served prioritising a system that has failed to produce a Test match batsmen since Joe Root debuted in 2012. There’s more to English – and international – cricket than one storied rivalry. Besides, that rivalry would benefit from England coming up with some original plot lines.

There was plenty of irony to go round at today’s select meeting of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee. After all, didn’t the government’s recent race commission conclude that “institutional racism doesn’t exist”? Azeem Rafiq’s testimony must have come as a shock to the all-white, predominantly male committee of MPs. A shock, too, to hear the admission from former Club Chairman Roger Hutton, answering the question of whether Yorkshire County Cricket Club was institutionally racist with “I fear it falls within that definition.”

Up next to face the irony: Tom Harrison. The same Tom Harrison who, along with other senior ECB executives, recently shared a reported 2.1 million pounds to “reward and encourage the long-term performance and growth of the organisation/game.” Hmmm. How’s that going?

Lastly, we were treated to the irony of MPs – rightly, as it goes – accusing Yorkshire and the ECB of conflicts of interest. That’s not to denigrate the character of anyone on the DCMS Committee or the importance of today’s meeting. It’s more a case of shining a light on the shamelessness that seems to pervade so much of the executive class in contemporary Britain. Maybe it shouldn’t come as a surprise, when the Prime Minister has been happy enough to use another derogatory p-word, and when the government has stoked the culture wars for their own political ends.

It’s worth reflecting on why it’s taken this long to reach this point. After all, it’s been in the public domain since Rafiq’s interview to Wisden Cricket Monthly’s Taha Hashim in August 2020. Firstly, Yorkshire have been allowed to delay and prevaricate. Secondly – and credit is due for this – Rafiq presumably chose not to make it about individuals by selling the finer details of the story before the report eventually came dribbling out.

At this point, it’s probably worth reflecting on how the story finally gained traction beyond the boundary. It’s a bit chicken-and-egg. Is the reader really more interested in the gossip of who said what to whom than an accusation of institutional racism? Or is the media pushing the agenda and doing it for the clicks? Either way, it took the tenacity and decency of the estimable George Dobell to break the story. Only then did money start to talk, and Yorkshire – shedding sponsors – and the ECB – its own brand at risk – began to sweat. It says something about the fitness of the ECB to govern, that Anchor Butter was quicker to make a moral stand.

It also says much about the arrogance of the ECB – enjoying a third appearance in front of the DCMS Committee in as many years – that we are to believe that the same people who presided over this whole sorry mess are the ones to clean it up. The same ECB who have done little to halt the retreat of cricket behind a paywall and a private school hedge are now vowing to make the game more inclusive. It’s worth saying again – it’s akin to Tesco riding into town as the saviours of the high street. There has rightly been a call for a clear-out at Yorkshire – it’s difficult to conclude that the same doesn’t apply to the ECB.

In the end, it’s a reminder that the individual isn’t entirely powerless against the institution, but that it takes a whole world of courage and time and effort to exercise that power. Watching Rafiq today, it was impossible not to be impressed by his perseverance and, above all, his selflessness in getting this far. This simply has to be a watershed moment, and Rafiq’s somewhat sacrificial role in it must not go unappreciated.

What do Scott Borthwick, Mason Crane, Richard Dawson, Warren Hegg and Boyd Rankin have in common?

Yep, they have all made unlikely appearances in the final Tests of away Ashes series. It got me thinking – I’m bored, ok, and England are to embark on another trip Down Under in the not too distant future. Who could predict the England XI for Sydney 2022, or if anyone will be added to the above list, so indulge me instead in imagining what the Ashes would look like if subjected to the same fates that India encountered recently.

It doesn’t always scan. Joe Denly, had he still been in the side, might have made a better pound-shop Pujara than Jonny Bairstow, for example, and Ben Stokes, two players in one, is Hardik Pandya and Ajinkya Rahane. And the idea that England would play two spinners in Australia is far from credible. And Mark Wood playing three Tests back to back. And. And. And … it’s only a bit of fun.

It’s September 2021, and England have had a pretty good year, with a thrashing of Sri Lanka followed by a creditable 2-1 loss in India and a thrilling 3-2 victory at home to India (again). Backs, particularly Ed Smith’s, are being patted as the rotation policy has reported a clean bill of health. But that is all about to change. The T20 Blast has been shunted to the arse-end of the season because of the underwhelming arrival of the Hundred, and a few England players are helping out their ailing counties by playing a game or two. Not helping out England, though, as Stuart Broad (abdominal tear) and Sam Curran (thigh) are both ruled out of the Ashes squad. And Rory Burns, despite a twanged hamstring, plays in the final, and is thought to be at least out of the first two Tests of what will be, thanks to the preceding T20 World Cup, a four-Test series.

England lose the T20 World Cup final, missing the concussed and hamstrung Moeen Ali and the bowling of Ben Stokes. Moeen, back in form as a genuine all-rounder, will miss the first Test. Stokes will play as a specialist batsman. Oh, and Joe Root is going home on paternity leave after the first Test, remember. Not until he’s seen his side lose, skittled for 36, though, or until Jimmy Anderson has an arm broken. He had been getting ready for it for some time, after all.

For the Second Test, Zak Crawley, horribly out of form, makes way for Dan Lawrence while Jos Buttler, who many thought should have started the series, comes back in for Ben Foakes, albeit batting a spot higher at 6 due to Root’s absence and the return of Moeen at 7. Anderson is replaced by Mark Wood. Ben Stokes, captain in Root’s absence, scores a man-of-the-match-winning century and inspires his bowlers to a great team victory. Remarkably, Steve Smith has been kept quiet, scoring 10 runs over his four innings so far, falling twice to a rejuvenated Jack Leach and once to the impressive Jofra Archer.

The only downside is another injury, Chris Woakes pulling a calf. His replacement for the third Test is Ollie Stone, while the fit again Burns returns for Dom Sibley. In an eventful game in which Mark Wood, missing his father’s funeral to play, calls out abusive fans, England hold out bravely for a draw. Ollie Pope and Leach are the heroes, defying the Australian attack (bowling and verbal) despite suffering from a torn hamstring and a bad back, respectively. Both are out of the fourth and final Test, which England only need to draw to regain the Ashes. Moeen (broken thumb) and Archer (side strain) are also injured.

England are down to the bare bones. Sibley comes back in for Pope, Dom Bess replaces Leach, while Tom Curran and Ollie Robinson come into an already incredibly inexperienced bowling unit. Nobody is giving England a chance. They’ve done well to take it this far, but batting out for a draw on a fifth day pitch at the Gabba against this Aussie attack is a step too far. Try telling that to Bairstow. Try telling him he gets bowled too easily, that his white-ball gains have been his red-ball losses. Try telling him he can’t score 56 from 211 balls. Stokes has other, even more ambitious, ideas. He thinks England can win this. And so does Buttler, scoring a breathtaking 89 not out as England B, as they have been dubbed, scrap to a stunning 3-wicket win.

Back in post-Covid England, the series, like the earlier tour to India, is a massive hit on Channel 4, and the ECB can no longer ignore the clamour to return all Tests to free-to-air TV. Imagine that.

India weren’t going to win in Australia. This wasn’t going to be a repeat of two years ago: Steve Smith and David Warner were back; Marnus Labuschange had emerged; and the bowling attack, in home conditions, remained formidable. India weren’t going to win with captain Virat Kohli, averaging 54.08 in Tests in Australia, going home after the first Test for the birth of his first child.

India certainly weren’t going to win after being bowled out for 36 in the second innings of the first Test at Adelaide. Even after bouncing back to win in Melbourne and drawing in Sydney, India weren’t going to win. Not at the Gabba, where Tim Paine couldn’t wait to get Ravichandran Ashwin. Not at the Gabbattoir, where Australia were last beaten in 1988 by a West Indies team of Greenidge-Haynes-Richardson-Hooper-Richards-Logie-Dujon-Marshall-Ambrose-Walsh-Patterson. Just imagine Richards was on paternity leave, and the bowlers and their back-ups were injured, replaced by an attack with 13 Test wickets between them. And imagine one of Greenidge or Haynes was replaced by a 21 year-old playing in his third Test, and Dujon was replaced by a 23 year-old, and that neither had made the XI at the start of the series.

No, India weren’t going to win. Not without Ashwin, Jasprit Bumrah, Ravi Jadeja, Mohammad Shami, Hanuma Vihari and Umesh Yadav, all injured by the end of the third Test. Not when only three players – Ajinkya Rahane, Cheteshwar Pujara and the recalled Mayank Agarwal – remained from the XI that started the series. Not when bubble fatigue and abusive fans were also factored in.

328 to win. On a fifth day pitch. India aren’t going to win.

But, waking up in the middle of the night for a piss, I wonder how they’re getting on. Might as well stick the radio commentary on. Two balls later, Gill is out. India aren’t going to win this. But Pujara isn’t going to lose it. Over his dead body. He is eating and wearing balls, as he has done throughout the series, resulting in impatient commentators talking a lot of balls, failing to appreciate the job he’s been doing in tiring out the Australian bowlers, in playing the longest of long games. If Pujara is doing his best to save the game, it sounds like his captain, with a brisk 24 from 22 balls, and the decision to promote Pant, has eyes on winning it.

I fall back to sleep at tea. 183-3. India aren’t going to win.

Yet they did. A win for the ages.

The kind of win that emboldens people to identify as fans of Test cricket, as purists with suitably sophisticated taste and intelligence to get such a complex and nuanced game. The kind of win that makes people nod sagely and conclude that a Test match, of all things, was a great advertisement for Test cricket. Test cricket, you’ll notice. Not cricket. Certainly not that T20 nonsense. You see, in these binary times, to love something is to hate something else. There is no and, just or. Messi or Ronaldo? Tests or T20?*

It was the kind of win that makes people think that Test cricket is [checks notes] dying, or at least facing some kind of existential threat. And that threat is T20. The kind of win that leads Simon Heffer, writing (if you can call it that) in a serious national newspaper (if that’s what you can call the Daily Telegraph), that the way to save Test cricket is to ban anyone who plays a white-ball match from red-ball cricket for a year.

There are reasonable arguments to be made that the conditions for Test cricket to thrive are suboptimal, that it’s being marginalised and that skills are being lost. The counter is to say it was ever thus, and that Test cricket is as alive and as well as it ever has been in my thirty-odd years of following it. Much of this is a direct consequence of white-ball cricket. Fielding and the broadening of scoring options, most obviously, but also psychologically. Maybe the acceptance of failure inherent in the fearlessness required in the IPL makes it easier to forget being bundled out for 36, makes it easier for run-chases like India’s – innings like Pant’s.

The real beauty of Pant’s innings was that it came in the same game – the same innings, concurrently for 23.3 overs – as Pujara’s innings. A great advertisement for cricket, in all its rich and varied and interconnected forms, you could say.

*Messi and Tests, if I had to choose.

Man, it was great batting weather. And my new bat was winking at me. But back in the Spring – back in the middle of Lockdown, back when Wednesday was my only day off and when 9 holes at Cambridge Lakes was my only opportunity for some gentle sporting competition – the idea of getting to play cricket this year felt absurd. So perhaps my cameo appearance in a bank holiday friendly at Elmdon was apt. I wasn’t supposed to be playing. I’d gone to watch. There had been talk of making it a 12-a-side game, but my toe was wrecked. Thanks, but no thanks.

Ten years previously, I’d been opening the batting for Camden First team, league winners for the first time in the history of Cambridge’s oldest cricket club. A lot has changed since then, but the Thirds remain – albeit they are now the First XI. The only XI, to be fair. It might seem strange, but a team of middle-aged rank amateurs was the most sustainable part of Camden when it all went tits up just four short years after that league triumph. And while the waistlines and, in Redders’ case, the list of excuses may have expanded, the essence of Camden – of the team my dad helped nurture into existence – has endured.

So it was very Camden to be 40-odd for 6, batting first. Sod it, I might as well have a bat. At number 9. And in black tracky-b’s and using borrowed kit. And you know what? It was fun. Whisper it, but sweeping a hapless young seamer on the second bounce on a pudding of a pitch might have been as fun as facing up to Cambridgeshire’s finest overseas pros. And I didn’t have to field. I could get used to this. If, as I’ve long suspected, there is no more accurate barometer of my state of mind as my batting average, then in the middle of a global pandemic I’ll take 27 not out.

I thought that would be that. A brief, absurd cameo. But there was more to come. Unburdened of having to work Sundays, there was suddenly the opportunity to play in a friendly at picturesque Chippenham. Nice deck, quick outfield, lovely place to play, and a perfect weather forecast. Why not? Might even wear whites this time.

You never know what standard of bowling will be on show in friendlies, but I was beginning to regret asking to bat 3. No matter, Redders soon fell to a smart caught and bowled for a rapid, boundary-heavy 62. Friendly game, friendly bowling. One poor old boy, I’d happily take his bowling as my luxury item on Desert Island Discs. But man, it was fun. There’s not much to rival the feeling of timing a cricket ball.

Never mind the game petered out into a draw. Never mind that Winter Is Coming. Forget all that. That barometer reads 83 not out. Roll on 2021.

Football’s back. Just a new royal yacht away from the morale of this great nation being fully restored.

Maybe it would be different if I’d been furloughed. Or if I was working from home. Or if I was home-schooling kids – or, perhaps most pertinently, if I was still a kid. Or if I supported a team – Liverpool, say. But, as listening to the first ten minutes of Man City v Arsenal confirmed, football behind closed doors is no escapism. Rather, the eeriness of it all is a stark reminder of lockdown, and every VAR controversy is a reminder that the same levels of scrutiny could be better applied to our incompetent government.

Maybe, in those first intensely fretful weeks of lockdown, the return of Big Football wouldn’t have felt such an offensive example of warped priorities if I hadn’t been more worried about my mum, over 70 and undergoing cancer treatment.

The last thing I wanted to listen to was 5live or any podcast concerned with when football might return. Stop with all the pointless speculation. It’ll come back when it’s safe.

Except it won’t. There’s too much money involved. (Yet curiously not enough to share around while the covid storm is weathered, safe in the knowledge that more – so much more – is guaranteed once normal service is resumed and the football gravy train resumes its stratospheric journey.) “The game’s gone” has been a constant refrain during the Premier League years, but unnecessary away kits and impractical kick-off times, for example, never turned me off to the extent that the financially-motivated rush to complete the 2019/20 season has.

So here we are. It’s a highly personal choice and is no criticism of those for whom any football is better than no football, but, for the first time since forever, I haven’t been following the football. It’s not for me, Clive.

It helps that it sounds like I haven’t missed much – who knew that fitness and rhythm would have been hampered by a 100-day hiatus, or that football with no crowd would be so stale? – but I haven’t missed it one bit.

I joked the other day that lockdown had cured me of my terrible addiction to fantasy football. Add the breaking of the breakfast habit – itself a relic from the days of checking page 312 on teletext – of reading the transfer gossip on the BBC website, and I’m starting to wonder if that “fantasy” should be in brackets.

Is this the end of the affair? Did the 1983 sticker album mean nothing? The 1986 Everton kit. Neville Road rec. Mexico 86, Italia 90. Gary Lineker. Keith Houchen’s diving header. Cambridge United at Wembley. All those games at the Abbey – and a fair few at Portman Road. Euro 96. Morley, Cambridge Crusaders, the Don Boys. Olds v Youngs at Luard. World Cup Barns, the football WhatsApp group. All that mean nothing? And, besides, football has never been so good. Liverpool have been amazing this season. Last year’s Champions League, final apart, was insanely dramatic. England even avoided stinking out the last World Cup. Anyway, what about watching the Euro 96 replays on the ITV Hub? And all those nostalgia-filled podcasts? And how good have those kick-abouts in Lode been? 21 keep-ups with a lime the other day at work.

No, this isn’t how it ends, if it ever will. Covid will pass. All things pass. I’ll be back, football. And so will you.

Well, for getting decisions right, I s’pose. Fernando Llorente’s goal wasn’t handball; Sergio Aguero was offside in the build-up to Raheem Sterling’s.

But that assumes that a referee or one of his assistants making a decision in good faith, and in the blink of an eye, is wrong. So wrong that it’s worth altering the essence of football, of watching football. To invert Walter in The Big Lebowski, am I the only one around here who doesn’t give a shit about the rules?

Man City v Spurs was a great game. It would have been an equally great game without the intrusive officiousness of VAR. Go back to the pre-TV days and we’d all be talking about Man City’s dramatic comeback and whether Sterling’s hat-trick should nudge him ahead of Virgil van Dijk in the player of the year stakes. (He should be a shoe-in for SPOTY, incidentally). Nobody would even think that Aguero might have been offside. And so what if he was. A striker’s toe being offside is no great injustice. Nor is the ball striking a defender’s arm. Nobody appealed for offside on Aguero, just as nobody appealed for handball on Danny Rose in the first leg. Nobody is cheating. Nobody should be entitled to feel cheated. This is no Hand of God (or Henry), no Zidane headbutt. Get over it. Life’s not fair. Why should football be any different?

Because: TV. Because we can see – in ultra high definition slow-motion, from every conceivable angle – how it could be fair. Watching football on TV has conditioned us to think that every decision has to be poured over, to think that marginal offsides and debatable handballs matter. The history of radio phone-in 606 is instructive. From the whimsy of Danny Baker’s original show, to an outpouring of outrage. Instead of trialling VAR, football should have trialled a media moratorium on discussing refereeing decisions. I’ve long since thought that Match of the Day would be improved by showing more football. We don’t need to know what’s coming up next, and we don’t really need to analyse every contentious decision.

Maybe instead of VAR, we could be trying to improve referees and refereeing. After all, we’ve only had full-time professional referees since 2001. We could be trying to clarify the rules – handball especially. We could be trying to punish genuine cheating and violence.

But no. We’ve been seduced by the lure of technology. There’s no going back. VAR is here to stay.

VAR: what should it be good for? If not absolutely nothing, then it should be for eradicating the howler – and, hopefully, much of the howling.

Like so many of my cultural frames of reference, any knowledge I may have of basketball is pretty much rooted in the mid-1990s. I played a bit at school and, as a sport-mad kid with a half-American best friend, it was hard not to get caught up in the era of Michael Jordan and the Dream Team. Since then, it hadn’t really registered on my radar – save for the odd (again, mainly mid-90s) Hip Hop lyric – so I didn’t really know what to expect when, on a recent birthday trip to New York, my pal James offered me the present of accompanying him to Madison Square Garden for the Knicks v Lakers game.

To be fair, I didn’t really know I wanted to go at all. Or rather, I wanted to go – of course I did – but I didn’t really know if I could justify accepting such a generous gift. Especially when, as any football fan in this country will attest, the idea of sport as tourism doesn’t sit easy.

Unlike, it turned out, the tourist at this particular sporting event. Sitting easy in seats that wouldn’t have been out of place at a cinema. The idea that, compared to any other sporting occasion I’d known, it was closer to a movie-going experience was only enhanced by the huge screen directly in front of us. There was a moment – I’d looked up to see a replay and continued to watch the live action on the screen – when I completely forgot that the game on the screen was being played on the court below.

And what a game it was. What a game it is. What a player Lebron James of the Lakers is, two passes in particular eliciting a collective intake of breath that I’ll never forget. There was also, by contrast, the moment when the Knicks turned the ball over, leaving Lebron with a free run at the basket from the halfway line, the crowd giddy at the prospect. If the previous passes had come out of nowhere, then the inevitable dunk came out of everywhere.

But for all that Lebron stood out as the game’s – the Game’s – best and most dominant player, what struck me was that basketball is such a team game. From our seats – level with the right-hand basket as we looked; three-quarters of the way up the gently-banked arena – we got an insight into how space is created, the slow-slow-lightning fast rhythm of the play, and how football has borrowed the idea of screening at set-plays. For a non-contact sport, basketball is surprisingly physical.

Equally surprising was the Knicks winning – in both the context of a season in which, before the game, they sat at the foot of the Eastern Conference with a 13-56 record, and the context of the match. The Knicks started well, 41-30 up at the end of the first quarter, but trailed 63-66 at half-time. With a 9-point deficit, a touch over two minutes on the clock and just the one remaining time-out, it looked like they were staring yet another defeat in the face. But the Lakers only managed to add a single point to the Knicks’ 11. It went to the final play of the game.

124-123. A one-point game. The Lakers – or rather, Lebron James with the game in his hands and his hands on the ball. Defence! Defence! All eyes on Lebron and that bouncing ball. Defence! Defence! Mario Hezonja of the Knicks has his eyes on Lebron and that bouncing ball. Defence! Defence! Time seems to stand still, but the clock keeps ticking down. Lebron makes his move. Hold on. Hezonja has his hand on the ball. Then, with the ball bobbling up, his other hand. Then DeAndre Jordan of the Knicks has both hands on the ball, the buzzer goes, and the Knicks have nicked a win. Scenes.

They – and basketball – have won me over, too. Even without the dramatic finish, it would have been a uniquely entertaining experience. It was totally alien to any other sporting event I’ve been to, but in its own context it made perfect sense. A ball game at the Garden – at the “World’s Most Famous Arena” – is an intoxicatingly relentless show, on and off the court. From the anthem onwards, there is always something happening. Time-outs for the players, but not for the crowd. Cheerleaders, kiss cam, dance cam, t-shirt toss, caption competition, Wyclef Jean at half-time … they all fill the gaps, but none of it seems intrusive or contrived, as is the case when these Americanisms are imported into British sport, and none of it detracts from the main event.