The game ends and everyone smiles. Hands are shaken, jokes are traded and backs are patted. Well done everyone, really well done, I’m so proud of each and every one of you. A lad from Chennai speaks to one from Canterbury, who trades a joke with a player from Cape Town, who gives a knowing look to one from Canberra who smiles at one from Colombo who gives a noogie to a bloke from Chittagong. Paul McCartney enters stage right and starts singing Hey Jude, Steve Smith has his guitar out and MS Dhoni is telling stories by the campfire of when he used to hit it off the square. “Time for bed now children”, yells Danny Morrison, “there’ll be plenty more time for IPL tomorrow.” As he carefully makes his way out of the room, he ever so delicately turns the light out and closes the door behind him. “VIVO IPL Perfect Bedtime of the Week,” he bellows down the hall.

I don’t like it. Or at least, I think I don’t. But I’m not sure. One of the great benefits of franchise cricket has been that these friendships between players have been made. Barriers have been broken down, knowledge has been traded and the sport (at a playing level, at least) is a happier and healthier place for it. And how can that be bad?

On the contrary, many fans seem to love the IPL for it. Photos of teams conversing after a game regularly do the rounds on Twitter with love heart emojis attached and sentiments shared that this really is the beauty of the game. Play hard on the field, then be friends off it. What a magical combination, ten points to Gryffindor.

Earlier this week, after Delhi Capitals beat Chennai Super Kings in a top of the table clash, it went one further. With three balls to go and two runs to win, Shimron Hetmyer was on strike against Dwayne Bravo. The ball was bowled and Hetmyer clipped it down to the fine-leg boundary for the winning runs. Not three seconds later, Hetmyer had lept on Bravo’s back to celebrate. They are friends. And that is fine. But can someone please punch someone in the face? Where’s the aggro? The needle? The anger? The competition?

This is super-cool – Bravo and Hetmyer. Brothers from West Indies. pic.twitter.com/0fka9HaNCm

— Johns. (@CricCrazyJohns) October 4, 2021

One of the things that makes sport great is the delusion that we build up around it that it actually matters. Because, in our heart of hearts, we know it doesn’t. We know the person on the other team is probably a lovely person. In fact, they’ve got two kids and a long-term partner. They even just put a deposit down on a nice little three-bed an hour out of town. Yeah A3 then A31…no, no just past the M25. Yeah, that one. Good luck to ‘em. But for the sake of this fixture and this moment in time? Pitchforks.

What I suspect has happened here is that the professional game has grown up. That it has improved for the player in a way that has taken away from the spectator that is thirsty for drama. Rivalries are exciting, aggro is riveting and the scenes that the commentators tell us we really don’t like to see, are the ones we actually really do. Like it or not, when a scuffle breaks out between players at a sporting fixture, the crowd stands up to get a better view, it doesn’t turn away in moral outrage.

Aside from the rather startling conclusion that writing this piece has brought me to that I’m a bad person, I also doubt that I’m alone in my moral quandary between liking the fact that these competitions bring players, or more pointedly, people together, but also wanting that almost pantomime rivalry to remain. It’s not contained to the IPL either. Moments after the end of The Hundred final, players were chatting to one another. Where are the tears of despair? The ecstasy and the agony? These violent delights should have violent ends, after all.

Perhaps in a quirk of who the sport matters to most in that their livelihood depends on it, it is the professionals that have cottoned onto the secret that us as fans try so desperately hard to ignore. That it really is just a game. By playing so much cricket and for so many different teams, some of that raw passion is diminished and more relationships with players around the world are made. And for the sake of humanity that should be celebrated. But for the sake of us as fans? I’m not so sure.