Ben Stokes's England show how sport should be played in win for the ages

Ideally it is a combination of the two.

Winning is part of the entertainment, after all; there is nothing enjoyable about losing.

“Bazball” gets to the root of this question.

England drove the Test match in Rawalpindi, scored over 500 runs on the first day and yet could still have lost an incredible game.

In an effort to win, they gambled everything with a fearless approach and a bold declaration that ultimately paid off.

Sport is an entertainment industry, the old cliche goes, one usually trotted out with no supporting evidence. Indeed, many clubs and teams pay lip service to the concept, which invariably sounds good until push comes to shove.

Sport was supposedly an entertainment industry when England declined a run chase on the final day of the Lord’s Test against New Zealand last year, crawling to 170-3 from 70 overs after Kane Williamson set them a target of 273 in a possible 75 overs.

Spectators had just returned after Covid, and there was a chance for England to put on a show for fans starved of sport. So what did they do? They followed the mantra that sport is more business than entertainment, adopting a cautious approach so they did not lose the game, a tactic for which they were rightly criticised.

The difference with this England team is that they are walking the walk, not just talking the talk, and recognising the essence of sport as entertainment.

It would be quite wrong to say that captain Ben Stokes and head coach Brendon McCullum do not want to win; they are as fiercely competitive as anyone, and their track record isn’t too shabby - now seven wins in eight Tests, a remarkable start.

But they see the bigger picture of a game not just about money, not just about win-at-all-costs, or rather lose-at-no-cost, but about actually entertaining the paying public. It says it all, in fact, that their approach seems so extraordinary, so revolutionary, in these days of ultra professionalism and commercial imperatives.

Is there a balancing act?

Of course.

If England lose next year’s Ashes 5-0 (admittedly fanciful on this evidence), the paying public is unlikely to be quite so accommodating or understanding.

Results aren’t everything, but they are something; otherwise, there would be no point playing. But nor is winning everything, as it so often seems, in a world which often forgets the essence of sport as entertainment.

It is that essence which compels a child to pick up a cricket bat in the first place, to badger their parents to take them to a game. It is the unfettered spirit that you see in the playground, a spirit which England have evoked under Stokes and McCullum. Indeed, what England are doing now is basically an extension of the playground; they are playing with fun and great joie de vivre.

Much has been made lately of how the England and Wales Cricket Board has received a £400m bid for a controlling stake in The Hundred.

Stories like that leave this writer cold; private equity markets have little to do with playground spirit and the essence of sport.

Yes, business is important and the financial bottom line cannot be ignored.

But England are reminding us that there is so much more to sport than money, much more than flagrant, ten-a-penny cash-seeking concepts such as The Hundred, something much more worthy at the heart of it all.

Let’s face it, money is ruining cricket, as it has already ruined football, to the extent that no one bats an eyelid anymore at stories of footballers being sold for £100m, or turning down £200,000 a week contracts, as Mason Mount has reportedly just done at Chelsea.

The numbers, the absurdity of it all, barely registers. But just think about that for a second. Could you turn down, let alone hope to receive, £200,000 a week – that’s £1m a year just for your five weeks’ annual leave?

Stokes and McCullum, themselves very well-paid, if not quite so lavishly, show how sport should be played and the value of entertainment.

It is inconceivable that any other captain or coach could have manufactured such a remarkable result from such unpromising materials, specifically a pitch so flat that when Pakistan played Australia there in March, the teams reckoned that they would have needed 10 days to get a result, let alone five.

In the words of Danny Blanchflower, the Tottenham Hotspur legend who played when football was still a true working man’s sport: “The great fallacy is that the game is first and last about winning. It’s nothing of the kind. The game is about glory.

"It is about doing things in style, with a flourish, about going out and beating the other lot, not waiting for them to die of boredom.”

Sound familiar?