If you stare at an image too closely all you see are weird pixels. So it is with sport. When you fixate on, say, the saga of Romelu Lukaku’s new contract, it’s easy to lose sight of a bigger picture: not least do we really now live in a universe where £90m release clauses are sane and logical?
I was reminded of the larger canvas of sport – the tendency for games to change and evolve without us noticing – when I interviewed Haseeb Hameed recently. Since making his debut for England this winter, the 20-year-old Lancashire opener has been compared frequently to Geoffrey Boycott. When Hameed popped into the Test Match Special box in India, a photograph was snapped of the pair; a comment underneath joked that their partnership would be “like two barnacles Superglued to the crease”.
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