Last year, my most enjoyable cricket included watching almost all of the IPL - Indian Premier League.
It is quite surprising how much I enjoy this, but I think I understand some of the reasons. There are many characters on show - and, while Test Match cricket is the ultimate revelation of character in sport - character become concentrated in the shortest form of cricket.
Each bowler has only a maximum of 24 legal deliveries - so that every single one counts for something. With only 120 deliveries per innings; each batter is under immense pressure to score quickly, yet too much haste leads to disaster.
Thus, after each delivery there is a significant shift of probabilities. And as the match reaches its close, the probability-shift per-delivery increases - so that there can be wider and wilder shifts on a ball-by-ball basis.
All this is enhanced by the stakes. The IPL is by-far the biggest-money competition in cricket; indeed on a per-hour basis, IPL cricket is among the highest paid of all sports. And India is a nation both in-love-with and obsessed-by cricket; and a nation that can flip from euphoria to utter misery, adulation to vilification, in the space of minutes.
The escalating ball-by-ball pressure is squeezed against the skills of the player - honed by years of practice, but prone to the vagaries of form and the unique match situation.
At the end of all this, it is character that often shines-through. Some characters break, others transcend the situation.
And there can be only one winner.
Yet, on another day - in another situation, the personnel may be reversed: the once-mighty may be brought low, and the recently-humiliated may triumph.
