Sport's return so welcome but absence has given a chance to pause and reflect

How do you think it’s all going to pan out? How would you price it? Where will we be on, say, the final day of 2021?

There are probably five outcomes that are sufficiently feasible to merit consideration: they have found a vaccine, effective treatment drugs have been developed, the virus has killed pretty much everyone it is going to kill, it has mutated into something less lethal, or it is just as dangerous as ever and we have learned to live with it as best we can.

Anything is possible, of course. Donald Trump might have kicked off a nuclear war by then or people from a wiser planet who are monitoring the madness could have decided to put us out of our misery and sent a massive meteorite to end the mayhem.

Is a vaccine around 6-4? Treatment drugs 4-1? Nobody knows, so let’s instead deal with something about which everyone does seem to agree.

Cheltenham should not have gone ahead, we are told on a pretty much daily basis by various experts. We bloody know.

Nothing should have gone ahead because, as hindsight has shown, we should have been safely locked down well before the second week of March. No festival, no football, no rush hours, no nothing.

Some, to be fair, were saying this at the time, but it is galling to hear so many after-timers banging on about Cheltenham as if it was the only way the virus was spread.

It is fundamentally poor journalism. Cheltenham was the last major sporting event to take place before we hunkered down, but it was by no means the only large congregation of people.

There was a full week of domestic and European football, working from home had not been enforced, and here’s something nobody ever mentions: approximately eight million pub visits were made between the final race of the festival finishing and lockdown starting.

I’m basing that on 40,000 pubs in the UK each attracting 25 customers per day for eight days. It is absurd to ignore these almost entirely indoor gatherings while continuing to obsess about Cheltenham, especially as the criticism of the meeting contains more supposition that it fanned the flames than evidence.

Racing took more grief when it was announced it would resume at the start of this week, with comedian David Baddiel making a pithy reference to “toffs” being pleased about the decision.

It was a pathetic little dig. Racing’s appeal encompasses people from all walks of life, all levels of wealth and all ethnicities. If Baddiel fancies walking into any inner-city betting shop when they reopen he will realise it is a sport that brings joy, fascination and excitement to many, especially those who have borne the brunt of lockdown boredom.

How I missed it during those weird weeks of home confinement, when, having initially opted against a total betting break, I fished around for opportunities that offered the slightest hint that I was making an informed choice.

I focused my attention on football in Belarus and basketball from Taiwan and kept stakes small. But while I will always have a place in my heart for FK Slutsk and the wonderful accordion-playing fan of Isloch, it became clear after a while that I was just plain guessing.

The basketball livened up the odd empty morning and I tried to get to grips with the relative ability and scoring prowess of Pauian Archiland, Yukon Dinos and other exotically-named teams. But then I realised how much basketball bores me, which is why I am the only person on the planet who has not seen the Michael Jordan documentary.

The final two minutes, littered with timeouts, go on for ever and when an unders bet was thwarted because the game was tied and they went into overtime, which counted, I drew stumps.

Reference to stumps takes me to the lockdown highlight, a T10 cricket match in Taipei. A friend informed me the side bowling first had an attack that appeared to comprise a group of half-cut dads who had decided to have a game towards the end of a particularly boozy barbecue.

So I bought total runs, switched on the stream and was treated to the sight of the most shambolic event I have seen priced up by a licensed bookmaker. It appeared to be taking place in a public park, with a wicket consisting of a rolled out carpet and a fielding side even less athletic looking than my friend had described.

Bowlers were lobbing wide after wide, with those deliveries that did happen to be straight enough not to be called, getting smashed everywhere.

The total was surpassed in no time but it dawned on me I could easily have been on the wrong end of it and had that happened I might never have placed another bet, so I knocked it on the head until German football resumed.

It is lovely to see the sporting garden emerge bit by bit from its spring hibernation, but it is also hard to feel the same levels of intensity towards it with so many lives having been lost and so much grief everywhere.

I don’t believe it is wrong to feel emotional about sport at such a tragic time because, hideous though the death toll has been, if we stop enjoying life’s little things we may as well give up completely, but nor do I feel the remotest flicker of excitement at speculation that team X might buy player Y.

I would love Pinatubo to win the Guineas like Frankel did because having another true champion would brighten up the summer and autumn, but if the favourite fails the pain will be far less acute than normal.

Sport is, however, crucial for improving the mood of so many people and the sooner it can be back in its old fantastic form, with crowds cheering on every moment of excellence, the better.

It is certainly a relief to have live sport taking place, the outcome of which we are unaware while we watch it. I’m afraid the valiant attempts of broadcasters to enthrall us with the very finest archive footage from the vaults failed to excite me from an extremely early stage. I know the past. The future holds the intrigue.

That’s why sport is so important. It has a range of outcomes that all fascinate without the threat of tens of thousands of people losing their lives. The worst that can happen is the team you support gets relegated, and if you can’t cope with that at a time like this you need to reassess your values.

That does, however, raise an interesting question for how we relate to sport. If it is insensitive to wallow in sorrow at your team’s defeats, can their triumphs generate the same highs as before? For me, life will have to closely resemble what it used to before that can be the case.

So what will happen with this dreadful virus that has caused so much trauma? That is a matter on which one can only speculate with a sense of dread, even as someone like me who looks at the statistics in other countries and believes things will finally get back to something like the old normal in the end.

It has been the strangest ten weeks of my life. On sunkissed days it has been possible to lie there, stare up at a dazzling sapphire sky uncontaminated by aeroplane vapours and kid yourself, as the birds sing, that life is fine, before the daily death toll drags you back to reality.

But there have been reasons to feel uplifted. People have undoubtedly been friendlier, Captain Tom was fantastic, NHS and care workers have shown humbling courage and heroism, and we have seen a glimpse of a possible exciting greener future.

And while I would never again want to go this long without sport, it was nice to break the habit of loafing on the sofa, flicking around for something to watch and invariably bet on.

Unless the feared second wave becomes reality we will be bombarded with sport in the coming months, and while that can only be wonderful news, I am determined to try to pick and choose what I watch and limit my daily viewing hours to single figures.

Today's top sports betting stories

Follow us on Twitter @racingpostsport

Like us on Facebook RacingPostSport