Equality v excellence: what's your pick?

For some time now, this column's best friend has been adamant that, as a spectacle, the champion sport de jour is tennis. A convincing counter-argument grew all the trickier after the first two sets of Sunday's Melbourne scrap between Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray. Technical excellence, balletic interplay, Hitchcockian suspense and even a nifty spot of subterfuge: those two and a half hours had the lot.

Granted, the other specials on the weekend menu left the palate uninspired, if not jaded: Chelsea gallantly set their sights on neutralising Manchester City; the Super Bowl culminated in a controversial strategic cock-up and brawl; in Perth, England showed that Mitchophobia is alive and ducking. Nothing, though, can diminish the conviction that the Serb and the Scot staged the most gripping, mesmerising sporting theatre this column has seen since, well, Rafa beat Rog in the 2008 Wimbledon showdown.

The defence, all the same, would proclaim that tennis lags behind cricket, spiritually and aesthetically, on five main counts:

a) As an individual activity (primarily), it lacks the collectivism that can render team games such a model for upstanding citizenship (as liberally mocked as that idealistic ethos is).

b) Social class and financial clout count for way too much.

c) Tennis can do even more to nourish the senses - the ball is comparatively soft and the arena smaller, making the extraordinary more attainable - but lacks cricket's variety and breadth of skills.

d) Tennis is too bloody fast for proper contemplation.

e) "Unforced errors" is a nonsensical determinant of efficiency, all the more so given tennis' exacting physical demands and defiant refusal to abide by a clock. What with the expectations and derision of the crowd, the fraying nerves, the harassed mind and aching muscles, aren't all sporting errors enforced? Witness Djokovic's decisive stroke on Sunday - exaggerating pain, convincing Murray he could afford to relax. Tennis is often likened to non-contact boxing; Muhammad Ali would have been proud of that stunt.

The bottom line, nonetheless, is that for sheer sustained excellence over both time and prolonged passages of the same contest, it is almost inconceivable that any of the competitive arts could be practised with more brilliance and beauty than they currently are by Serena and the boys - Novak, Andy, Rafa and the Fed, and occasionally by contenders such as Tomas Berdych, Grigor Dimitrov and Nick Kyrgios - and not merely because the absence of physical threat makes it easier to maintain that quality.

Ten years ago cricket boasted a similarly heady blend of champions and heirs apparent. Consider 2005's ICC World Test XI: Sehwag, Smith, Ponting (capt), Kallis, Lara, Inzamam, Flintoff, Gilchrist (wk), Warne, Vaas, McGrath, Kumble. The following year, Dravid returned, Muralitharan and Sangakkara debuted, and only Ponting, Flintoff, Warne and McGrath retained their berths, the last three for the final time.

Come 2009, the year Sachin Tendulkar finally justified inclusion, there were no fewer than ten debutants, including de Villiers, Clarke, Dhoni and His Mitchness. The next year found Amla and Swann joining the new kings on the block. Only de Villiers, Sangakkara and Steyn from that 2010 XI were named in 2014, when the ranks numbered six first-timers and just two other repeat nominees, Broad and Johnson.

Even though its practitioners generally peak and retire earlier, tennis, by contrast, has been ruled by the same minor geniuses since the start of 2008. Only Andy and the Fed (once each) have not finished in the year-end top four on every occasion. From 2001 to 2007, 12 different players attained those positions; from 1994 to 2000, 16 did. Serena Williams, meanwhile, has only once dropped outside the annual top 12 since breaking into the upper echelons of the WTA charts in 1999. By any measure, this represents stupendous, even freakish, consistency. Ah, the benefits of self-reliance and never having to fear being run out by an idiotic, greedy or vengeful partner. Dominance by the few, though, is the enemy of spectator sport's best friend - uncertainty.

Cricket need not be modest about its own presiding emperors: Steyn (seven ICC Test XIs in a row), de Villiers (six in a row), Sangakkara (seven of the past nine) and Amla (four of the past five). For them, keeping the customers and purists satisfied is all the more daunting since each member plays at the highest level in three formats, all demanding different approaches - tactically, technically, mentally.

Through a half-full glass, both these foursomes are absolutely fabulous and would have been in any era; through a half-empty one, you wonder whether they are being flattered by competition or conditions. Just because sport rewards optimism far more frequently than it vindicates pessimism doesn't mean both interpretations can't be valid.

The trouble with direct comparisons is that while the ATP and WTA rankings were introduced, respectively, in 1973 and 1975, the ICC version does not readily lend itself to detailed analysis. The Test XI, furthermore, was first chosen in 2004. By then most of that unfairly blessed era's brightest stars had done most of their dazzling: of the inaugural annual ICC XI, only Ponting (four) and Kallis (five) were picked more than twice thereafter. Dating back to the 2007 side, four different wicketkeepers, 13 different pacemen and seven different spinners have been honoured (eight if one interprets Kane Williamson's inclusion as a nod to his burgeoning versatility).

This doubtless confirms pretty much everything you ever thought you knew about the growing demands on bones and loyalties in the T20 era, the clampdown on spinners, and all those sodding chief executives' pitches. Excellence, in short, has taken a back seat. On the other hand, there is a case to be made that the playing field has never been more level, heightening drama and suspense.

Here are some semi-random numbers to crunch, bearing in mind that of the 2156 Tests to date, 331 have been played since the end of 2006 (15.4%), 676 this century (31.4%) and 917 (42.5%) since the start of 1994:

There's more. In both this decade thus far and over the entirety of the last one, seven of the ten Test nations have recorded a win-loss ratio of 0.700 or better; in the 1990s, five out of nine managed this; in the 1980s, four of seven; in the 1930s, the first full decade of the expansion era, two of six. In other words, aside from the 1970s (five of six), the balance of power in this respect is as even as it has ever been. Nor is this impression belied by the presence of seven and six national flags, respectively, in the top ten of the batting and bowling rankings.

Like beauty, cheating and statistics, of course, equality is in the eye of the beholder. To state that bat rules ball is akin to pointing out that a cow cannot actually jump over the moon. Cue another batch of stats, this time to capture the imbalance within. This young century has already witnessed:

That no fewer than 20 of the 61 most productive duets have been compiled since May 2006 (32%) is no less salutary. Or depressing. Given the proportion of Tests played this century, all these ratios deviate alarmingly from statistical expectation. Ditto the fact that 13 of the 21 totals of 700-plus have been aggregated this century (61.9%). Even so, there are upsides to what the game's historians will surely dub the Jethro Tull Age - a brutal period of tyranny when bowlers came close to extinction and bats were thick as a brick.

For one thing, some of those partnership landmarks touch the romantic in us all: the past five years alone have brought us the third-highest alliance for the ninth wicket and a new peak for the eighth, not to mention the two loftiest for the tenth. Closing the gap between specialists and tailenders is surely a sign of rising overall standards.

Besides, there is a speck of hope for the pie-chuckers: half the eight senior Test nations have recorded a lower average total this decade than between 2000 and 2009. The reward-outweighs-risk philosophy of T20 has been a factor, yes, but so has the DRS.

Most surprising of all, rumours of the death of concentration have been swatted away with contempt: not only have eight of the 15 longest innings in Test annals been constructed since Christmas day in 1999, Hashim Amla's 790 minutes, Brendon McCullum's 775, Alastair Cook's 773 and Younis Khan's 760 have been composed since the birth of the IPL and the DRS.

Anyone for tennis now?