The latest British Social Attitudes survey shows a marked decline in religious affiliation and steadily growing confidence in science in the population of the United Kingdom. But what captures the imagination and stirs the soul may be neither of these. At times football has been hailed as the true British religion; but last weekend, perhaps, it had to give way to cricket.

Last Sunday England won a hair’s-breadth victory in the ODI World Cup, in what the papers claimed next day was the greatest sporting contest since whenever. Cricket stretches human achievement to its limit, cultivates moral character, generates team spirit and carefully balances collective effort against individual genius. “Not cricket” is synonymous with cheating of any kind, so cricket is a moral code as well as a game. If “integral human development’’ is the ultimate aim of religious faith, as various papal encyclicals have asserted, then cricket must come close second – but not quite as close as New Zealand did to England in that frenetic denouement at Lord’s Cricket Ground early on Sunday evening.

The Kiwis tied and tied again, showing the two teams to be of equal skill and courage, and they only lost on some exotic measure of boundaries scored.