Grubby tales about drugs, bungs, bribes, betting and fixed matches have not affected, it seems, the world's appetite for a true sporting contest, a head-on clash that tests speed of mind and body, intelligence, honour, loyalty, spatial awareness, stamina, determination and courage.

That such shining ethics still attract devotion is confirmed by the colossal audiences for Premier League football, up to a billion around the world watching morning, afternoon and evening.

ITV1 are cockahoop over the 12 million viewers who switched on to watch England beat France last Saturday in the Rugby World Cup semi-final.

Advertisers are dizzy – such figures put rugby alongside even Coronation Street. And even Corrie will be knocked sideways by the number of viewers who will watch tonight's final against South Africa. For one channel, Christmas has come early.

So it is not just the British who are enraptured but it is the British who can claim, almost without exception, to have invented every major sport.

Cricket, or a form of it, we know, is mentioned as far back as the 15th century and football, less blessed with historians, can be traced almost as far back. Medieval kings of England, the Edwards and the Richards, were so concerned that the nation's youth should waste time in such pursuits instead of practising archery, England's battle winner, that they were banned.

The Welsh were the best bowmen, the Scots invented golf and curling, the Irish hurling and Gaelic football.

The British abroad, as usual cocking a snook at London, turned into Americans and Australians and converted originals into variations, hence baseball and Australian rules.

America also took a good look at rugby and turned into something
the rest of the world finds incomprehensible: gridiron. Why were we so inventive, despite discouragement, sometimes from governments, almost always from most women and from the entire artistic movement who, tell us, in memoir after biography, of how much they despised the "hearties" or the "jocks"?

Is it in the British genes? These islands were fought over for a millennium by the entrepreneurs of Europe, the get-up-and-go folk who came across the Channel or North Sea in waves: the Celts, Britons, Romans, Angles, Saxons, Vikings and Normans. Each invasion was resisted bitterly by those installed. Each occupation provoked a lingering resistance.

Even today, Britain remains a land of tribal enclaves, cities and counties that are constantly changing. Leicester and Luton will soon be areas of white minorities. Edinburgh now has a colony of 20,000 Poles. West Indian immigrants made their mark on the cricket in London two decades ago.

Asian players have been emerging in the Midlands and Adil Rashid is one of several young Yorkshire-born cricketers of Asian background who will play for England in the future.

And while grandad and grandma may still think of the Punjab, or Jamaica, as home, the second generation seem as captivated by sport as any boy or girl born in Bath or Barnsley.

Support your local tribe – "team" is a slogan understood by all. And it is that "clan", family loyalty, that causes more club versus country clashes over the issues of selection and reward in Britain than anywhere.

Sport here began at the roots and flowered into a national conception; elsewhere, the national team was a priority from the start.

Unlike our Celtic neighbours, the Scots especially, it is only occasionally that a sporting moment grips the nation. I have memories of five such times starting with 1938 when, as one writer put it: "The Empire held its breath."

England were playing Australia at the Oval and two countries were fascinated as a 21-year-old from Pudsey, Len Hutton, approached Don Bradman's individual Test record score of 334.

At sea, we were told, bands on luxury liners stopped playing while passengers crowded around crackling radios to follow the score as Hutton came nearer and nearer.

I was an eight-year-old, playing in my grandfather's garden on a sunny day in Ampthill, in Bedfordshire, when my father called me into the cottage and told me to stand by the radio, adding, sternly: "Don't make a noise."

I knew it had something to do with cricket because Yorkshire's progress was a regular topic of breakfast conversation. When Hutton cut the run that broke the record, I can remember Dad and Grandad grinning hugely and shaking hands and the sounds of my mother and grandmother opening bottles in the kitchen.

By 1966, I was reporting the football World Cup in the North-East where, to while away time between fixtures, the English Press formed a football team.

The Italian Press, hearing of this, challenged us and a fixture was arranged and a pitch booked. Convinced that the Italians would pull a fast one, we called up two ringers, Jackie Milburn and Len Shackleton, on the dubious grounds that both wrote columns for Sunday newspapers.

On the apponted morning, we were all there for an enthusiastic kickabout – who would miss the chance to say they had played in the same team as Wor Jackie and Shack? – but no Italians. North Korea had beaten Italy the night before.

I had a ticket for the World Cup final at Wembley but passed it on in favour of covering the Roses match at Old Trafford. Naturally, in Manchester, it rained so I did see Geoff Hurst's conclusive goal on screen after being invited into the Ladies' Pavilion to watch and sample some warm Lancaster hospitality.

I saw, and reported, Ian Botham's sensational series against Australia in 1981; we could have been watching Superman live.

Like most of us, I saw Jonny Wilkinson's World Cup winning goal in 2003, and saw him again, last Saturday, and the retrieval of the Ashes by Michael Vaughan's team in 2005 while glued to a screen,

When you are young you want to say: "I was there." When you are old, you want to report: "I saw it all."

When the British lose their passion for sport, then only will I believe that this country is going to the dogs. No, not greyhound racing.

Derek Hodgson is the author of Yorkshire County Cricket Club's official history.