IN A humiliation that will have been felt keenly across the world of cricket, a team representing Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack, the bible of the summer game, was given the mother of all quiz-based kickings on University Challenge by a side drawn from members of — of all things — the Romantic Novelists’ Association.

At stumps, Wisden were 145 all out, chasing a total of 245, and even though they were, as Jeremy Paxman, the quizmaster, observed, “coming back strongly” towards the end, the rout was complete by then. It must have been a long walk back to the pavilion — or to the studio car park.

This was a far cry from the outcome many of us had imagined when the draw was announced. Among the competitors entered for University Challenge: The Professionals, the Romantic Novelists were widely regarded as the fancy dans — hopeless romantics, indeed. Call that a job? Whereas the Wisden team would be bringing to the table the rangy, all-encompassing worldliness that arises from following cricket more closely than any people on earth follow anything.

As such, one fancied the Almanack lads to get among the romance writers from the off and, in all likelihood, have their bodices well and truly ripped before tea. One reckoned, however, without the scope and viciousness of the romance writers’ attack and without an obscure picture-round question on frogs.

This fell during the early exchanges and represented the Wisden side’s first real opportunity to settle at the crease and play themselves into contention with some bonus questions. Alas, Stephen Lynch’s reward for correctly identifying a bullfrog was to be given three further pictures of frogs to identify — namely, a poison dart frog from South America, a Madagascan tomato frog and a green tree frog. Nothing in the Wisden team’s experience — even having kept a sharp eye on Dominic Cork’s career — had readied them for biology at this level and the opportunity for valuable points was lost.

The side never recovered. True, a set of questions on cockney rhyming slang offered some easy spin and was promptly dispatched to the boundary, bringing Wisden briefly to within a highly bridgeable 20 points of their adversaries. Apart from that, though, Paxman was bowling almost nothing but beamers, relating mostly to things that happened about 700 years ago in Rotterdam. And, amazingly, the novelists were filling their boots. There didn’t seem to be any area they didn ’t know about — from Heidegger to Longfellow, via the theory of pi.

It wasn’t meant to be this way and Matthew Engel, the Wisden captain, was increasingly wearing the put-upon expression perfected in times of duress by Michael Atherton — the expression of a man who has realised belatedly that his jockstrap is still wet. Which was a shame because Engel’s partnership with Lynch, when it flared into life, deserved better. A question about shorthand was, for a journalist of longstanding, always going to be a full toss, but Engel further impressed the selectors by knowing what “bicameral” means (nothing to do with Sky Sports’ stump-cam, apparently) and being able to name, to within five years, the first year of manufacture of Heinz Baked Beans (1928).

Lynch, in turn, made up for slashing wildly at a question about HMS Pinafore by correctly defining the term “portmanteau word”. One doesn’t want to get into one of those tedious arguments about selection, but Wisden’s trouble seemed to be lower down the order, with Harriet Monkhouse and Hugh Chevalier, whose last vocal contribution to the programme was to introduce themselves at the beginning and against whose names the record will probably have to show “did not bat”. Still, as Chris Tarrant, the legendary cricket writer, is fond of saying, “they’re only easy if you know the answers”.

Some sneer at the “professionals” format, dismissing it as a mere “people pleaser” — the Twenty20, if you will, of the television quiz arena, a glib adjunct to the original game, the one with real consequences, played in earnest week in, week out by students with problem skin. Critics note with dismay that, just as the definition of what constitutes a university has undergone a drastic dilution in our time, so, too, has the definition of what constitutes a team that can go on University Challenge.

These same critics condemn the largely muted presence in the studio audience of fair-weather quiz fans and day-tripping opportunists, as opposed to the passionate, scarf-wearing diehards who people the bleachers for the regular encounters. And they lament the absence of traditional tokens of the University Challenge experience. Where are the infantile teddy bear mascots? And whither the token bearded weirdo studying natural science?

There’s an argument, too, that the idea of a professional University Challenge is conceptually confused, not to mention a slight let-down, entertainment wise, in that none of the same amazed fascination can attach to watching people who are not only clearly capable of holding down a job, but, by definition, actually do so.

Doubtless these reservations carry weight. At the same time, one watched Anne Ashurst, the author of a number of romantic novels, magnificently bring up the 200 by flashing the willow at a question on Erasmus and the debate seemed to disappear into the warm summer air.