"Lord, I believe - help thou my unbelief!"

Colwyn Bay Cricket Club, Bank Holiday Monday in August, the sun beating down and a glorious afternoon of cricket with my team, Lancashire, playing an utterly unimportant but absorbing one-day game against out-of-contract players, the “Unicorns”. It was sport in all its innocence and trivial glory, played in front of a few hundred dozing spectators, some of whom were perched on “The Bank” – Colwyn Bay’s answer to the world-famous grassy bank at Sydney Cricket Ground, except with about 30,000 fewer spectators and not nearly as much Forsters.

  And all of this played out a million miles away from the gambling dens of India and Pakistan, shady dealings with middlemen and suitcases of £50 notes, spot-betting on no-balls (alleged) and the storm surrounding the touring Pakistan cricket team that had blown up the previous day. Colwyn Bay is not Lahore. Still, just to emphasise the difference, even here, as in all county cricket grounds, players’ mobile phones are taken from them before they enter the Pavilion (if you can find it in Colwyn Bay). So what we were watching in a dozy Bank-Holiday picnic kind of way, was sport, pure and simple and “may the best team win”.

  Until, that is, a Lancashire fielder dropped an absolute dolly of a catch, the kind that Geoffrey Boycott says his mother could catch wearing her apron. Next to me, a patient father was trying to explain to an inquisitive cricket-loving son reading the banner headlines in the newspaper why people would try to bowl a “no-ball” in exchange for a lot of money. (A big lot of money.) And for one horrible flickering moment, just for one moment, I looked at that Lancashire fielder fumbling the catch and dared to think, “Did he deliberately drop it?” McLuhan’s global village has long been with us. Colwyn Bay is not a million miles from Lahore. Not any more. Even country cricket games in England take in huge bets on the Asian sub-continent. What if, what if…?

  The moment of my doubt passed. Partly because I know that country cricket players here are reasonably well paid (basic salary around £30,000) so the temptation to take bribes is – arguably – less than in Asia where cricketers are paid peanuts. But my doubt passed mainly because, like sports fans everywhere, I have to believe that what I am seeing is real. There is no room for atheism in sport. You have to believe that your team, your player, is trying their hardest. The moment you cease to believe that, sport loses its appeal and becomes like the TV wrestling that used to dominate ITV’s World of Sport in the 1970s, pure theatre with no sense of reality, no edge, no meaning at all.

 Fans of a Manchester-based Arabian football club may curse Teves for missing a sitter of a goal-scoring chance; Arsenal fans may wonder if Theo Walcott would score against a better goalkeeper. But we know that these guys are paid squillions of pounds a week, and again surely – surely? – the temptation to open that suitcase of £50 notes (alleged) is not so great. Is it?

  Oh, that scintilla of doubt! Bribery was one of the first “explanations” of the resurrection. You want a risen Jesus? Very well, you shall have one. Bribe the guards at the tomb of Jesus. Hide his body. Silence those in the know by a suitcase of gold coins. Except that sooner or later the truth would come out. It always does. Even so, we live with this constant living question-mark, for faith is nothing if there is no element of doubt. We believe. But we can never be certain, not absolutely certain. “Lord, I believe – help thou my unbelief!” Sports fans are no different from those who belong to any faith group. The celebration of a goal, of a match won by the “better team”, is marked by that little question-mark. Is this real? God, if there is one, help us if it is not!