Here are two quotes: "Nothing in cricket has the slightest importance when set against a single death from violence in Northern Ireland." And, second: ''Some people believe football is a matter of life and death. I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that." The first was said by iconic cricket commentator, John Arlott; the second, by Bill Shankley, the charismatic manager of Liverpool Football Club. What are we to make of this apparent conflict?

Play is part of living; death is the interruption of living. Of course we stop things for death, crisis, tragedy, disaster or loss. But play is central, not only to living from moment to moment, but to our sense of life, creativity and the development of skills. Play is equally related to work – it’s often serious and usually relates to how we interact with others, as well as to our inner sense of being.

There is much overlap in organised sport and creative play, though, of course, sport can be creative too. In each area there is a space set aside: there is room for things to happen within the stage, frame, field, pitch or arena that can’t easily happen elsewhere. My granddaughter created a place (the living room) called The Beach. When we played there it could be a beach, a school, a playground, a doctor’s surgery, a home for wolves, and so on. When we weren’t it was merely a room with two sofas in it. The Beach was a transitional space, a place set aside; a place between an objective external space, and a private transformed space. I read something recently about the mysteriousness of the space within the boundary of the cricket field. Such spaces have something of the sacred about them.

Sport galvanises and channels body, skill, competition, striving, aggression and often teamwork. It involves respect; one needs one’s opponent to push to improve and to help develop personal qualities like not giving up, not getting complacent. A wholehearted aggression is permitted within the rules and the ethos of many sports, which is particularly interesting in light of, for example, psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott and his view that there is a need for children to be allowed to hate and be furious, and for the parent to survive with his or her capacity for being a good-enough parent intact.