I was walking through the crowds outside the Hubert H Humphrey Metrodome in Minneapolis before the climactic game of the 1987 World Series - the score tied at 3-3 - when I overheard a remark that has always haunted me. "I don't care if it's a good game. I just care if we win."

So it would be a truly satisfying evening if the Minnesota Twins won because all the opposition pitchers simultaneously broke down with damaged rotator cuffs (the standard pitcher's injury), if the opposition batters were all struck blind, if all their fielders lost all their mitts and dropped every fly ball, if the umpires made a thousand errors in favour of the hosts. Entertainment begone, excellence begone: nothing matters in sport but partisanship.

That's a bleak and barren view of sport, but everyone who watches the stuff is touched by it. The 2005 Ashes series is remembered - at least in England - as one of the finest series ever played, but it wasn't. England won because Glenn McGrath injured himself before the second match after blowing England away in the first. Partisanship changes our view of sport.

And while I'm very much inclined to stress that the highest level at which sport can be enjoyed is that of excellence - the best against the best and victory goes to the great - I can't deny that I too savoured a moment of unholy joy when I heard that McGrath was out. So remember that when I get on my high horse.

All the same, I was there in Adelaide in 2006 when Australia had their revenge and England lost after declaring at 551 for 6. This happened because of the brilliance, and even more the competitive will, of Shane Warne. As a partisan of England I was devastated: as a partisan of the nation of excellence I was lost in wonder.

Cricket, like all sports, is richer for the excellence of the opposition. If they're not very good, how will your own people find greatness? It worries me when great performances - when great players - go unacknowledged. I was in Mumbai in 2012 when Kevin Pietersen played a great Test match innings: his century was greeted in near silence. There was louder applause when an Indian tailender ran a leg-bye.

This is not a straightforward sporting issue - but then no sporting issue ever is. International cricket is a contest between nations, and a nation is not just a sporting entity. England against anybody is about imperialism. An Indian victory over England is a celebration of the new India. India against Pakistan - but no, I won't try and analyse that right now. Let's just agree that it's not simple and it's not just about cricket.

Partisanship adds spice to every sporting dish. Try sitting alone in your room in the Holiday Inn in Borington, USA and cheering yourself up with the sports channel. What's this? A lumberjacking contest? Has the world gone mad? But before you know where you are, you are cheering for the man in the nice shirt and hoping he beats the fellow with the bad moustache.

Cheering is an inalienable human right. In 1990 the British politician Norman Tebbit complained that immigrants - and worse, their children - cheered for their nations of origin rather than for their adopted country. He asked: "Are you still harking back to where you came from or where you are?"

I'm not convinced that cricket is richer for booing Ricky Ponting, or for taunting Warne in song about his traumatic divorce

But such cheering, such harking, is not an expression of weakness or disloyalty. Roots are important to trees and humans both. I cheer for the Wigan rugby league team because it's a small tribute to my father: I've only been to Wigan twice. And besides, you don't cheer for anyone at the behest of a politician.

In football - especially club football in England - loyalty is all, the blinder the better. You can hate the players, hate the manager and hate the owners: but you love the club: Arsenal till I die, or whatever. And as Miss Jean Brodie said, "For those who like that sort of thing, that is the sort of thing they like."

But I reserve the right to change allegiance at the drop of a catch. In cricket I'm a plain-clothes Sri Lankan. Partly, this comes from a long stay I made there many years ago, partly from Sri Lanka's eternal determination to punch above their weight in cricket, partly from England's patronising treatment of Sri Lankan cricket in the 1980s - but mainly it's because of the joyous maverick brilliance of Sri Lanka's cricketers.

I like to fantasise about an old-style English coach in Sri Lanka: "No lad, not like that - brush your ear with your arm! And you, stop whirling your wrist about, you'll never get anywhere like that. And you, stop flicking the damn ball with your fingers, that'll never work. And you, batter - play that silly scoop shot one more time I'll throw you out of the nets."

But there is a shift in cricket-watching. People are increasingly expected to be supporters rather than spectators. The England team is followed around by the Barmy Army. It's a strange fact of life that people incapable of speech through drink are still capable of song: so towards the end of the day, every cricket ground where England play echoes with slurred anthems of partisanship. The England cricketers love them, at least at a distance, but I'm not convinced that cricket is richer for booing Ricky Ponting, or for taunting Warne in song about his traumatic divorce.

Partisanship is essential to sport, but it's the lowest level at which sport can be appreciated. The second level is drama, and that's what that 2005 Ashes series had in overplus. But the third and highest level is excellence: Warne, Ponting, Murali, Sachin - yes, and Usain Bolt, Roger Federer, Cristiano Ronaldo, Serena Williams, Jessica Ennis. But come, that's enough (though of true excellence you can never get enough). Here's one of Barnes' Laws of Sport: the more you fail to relish the excellence of the opposition, the more you cheat yourself of the finest things sport has to offer.

Simon Barnes is a former chief sportswriter of the Times and the author of more than 20 books

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.

 

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