Why is it that we watch sport?

PAUL EDWARDS: I quite see that the answers are many but a liking for the game being played plainly lies at the root of matters. No one has travelled some 200 miles to Taunton this week because they love all things Lancastrian but dislike cricket

Three years ago last June I travelled to New Road to cover the Royal London Cup semi-final between Worcestershire and Kent. It was a tremendous match and a wonderful example of the 50-over format. The home side made 306 for 6 with Ben Cox contributing an unbeaten 122, but with four balls left in the game Kent were 303 for 7.

At which point Heino Kuhn was caught by Daryl Mitchell off Pat Brown for 127. The odds were still quite strongly on a Kent victory and, as I recall, a Harry Podmore boundary off the next delivery ended the game. But what I remember most vividly from that day was the reaction of the large crowd at New Road, most of whom were home supporters, as Kuhn trooped off,  filled with guilt at the possibility he had cost his team their chance of a Lord’s final. The spectators rose to their feet and applauded him back to the pavilion.

This week’s column is being written in Taunton, where I am covering Somerset’s match against Lancashire. It is the second evening of the game and the visitors appear to be in control, a position created on the first day partly by Luke Wells’ first hundred for the county since his move from Sussex.

There are a good number of visiting supporters in the crowd at the County Ground. Taunton is a favourite destination, we are near the end of the season and Lancashire still have a chance of winning the County Championship But that does not explain the warm ovation that greeted Wells when he reached his century.

So what, you might reply, isn’t it usual for home supporters to applaud fine cricket, regardless of who plays it? I thought so, too, until recently, when I noticed that at some grounds the locals were grimly sitting on their hands when their team’s opponents performed well.

Such a trend was particularly noticeable during the T20 quarter-finals and it led one commentator whose analyses I greatly respect to say that he “expected nothing less” from the spectators. Well, sorry, but I expect rather more and I always will.

At this stage it’s possible this column could turn into some sort of fogey’s argument that four-day crowds are superior to their short-form counterparts. I’m very keen that should not happen. Likewise, it could become one of those pieces that see cricket as a grand moral crusade rather than a game when it’s pretty obvious it is no such thing and never has been.

^{It is T20 Blast Finals Day this Saturday, when the Hollies Stand will be packed once again after last year's behind-closed-doors showpiece}

Those of you interested in how such notions might be debunked might read Derek Birley’s excellent book The Willow Wand. I’ve been lost to cricket since my earliest toddlerhood but I’ve never thought it either a branch of religion or a higher form of diplomacy.

The point of this piece embraces a much simpler and a much bigger question: why do we watch sport? I quite see that the answers are many but a love or at least a liking for the game being played plainly lies at the root of matters. No one has travelled some 200 miles to Taunton this week because they love all things Lancastrian but dislike cricket.

At the same time why should support for any particular county matter more than your deeper attachment to the game itself? Are you not allowing your objective assessment to be clouded to such a degree that it prevents you showing your appreciation for your team’s opponents?

Let’s try another approach. We watch sport because we enjoy a contest; we derive satisfaction from seeing two groups of skilled athletes pit their skills against each other.

Bring back two divisions in the County Championship

A match in which one side makes 550 and the other is bowled out for 60 and 45 may interest the statisticians but it is not much of a game and spectators say as much when they return home and are asked whether they have had a good day. If, therefore, we want to see a battle what prevents us applauding all the players that provide one?

That includes both sets of players but it does not prevent us favouring one team over another. I might even argue that a spectator’s understanding of the game is enriched by the awareness that the other lot might triumph. Who would enjoy going to a game if they absolutely knew who was going to win?

The uncertainty and the sense of an approaching struggle is part of the fun and I do believe some of these ideas extend into our wider lives. A child that gets all he or she wants is often described as “spoiled”. An adult needs to understand that in a democracy the other side often wins.

^{Somerset fans generously applauded Luke Wells' hundred for Lancashire}

But let us return to our cricket and the home spectators who watch in sullen silence as the away team plays brilliantly. Perhaps they do not wish to encourage “their” opponents. Unfair enough, but I suspect even that tactic is counter-productive. I know of sportsmen, although not too many cricketers, who return to their dressing room and say they have shut the crowd up. Their colleagues are encouraged by this achievement.

Sometimes these situations are taken to humorous extremes. As usual the Melbourne Cricket Ground was packed to bursting for the start of the Boxing Day Test on the 2010-11 Ashes tour. The stands were rather less well populated at tea on the first afternoon when Australia had been bowled out for 98, and halfway through the final session the MCG contained mainly the Barmy Army and other England supporters. Vast area had been vacated.

England were 157 without loss at close of play with Alastair Cook on 90 and his then captain, Andrew Strauss, on 64. The fact that Strauss had not been quite at his fluent best did nothing to spoil the atmosphere in the away dressing room. “I knew I was plinking it but I’ve never emptied a ground before,” observed the England skipper.