Just what we need, another expenses scandal. But at least W. G. Grace did it properly. Not for the portly cricketing legend the niggardly claims for biscuits and spare lavatory seats that have so chaotically altered the standing of our politicians. When Grace filled out his claims forms, they stayed filled out.

For instance, for the honour of the big man's strictly “amateur” participation in an international tour, organisers were required to arrange first-class accommodation for Grace and his wife and drum up a tear-inducing fee of £3,000 - enough to buy an entire terrace of houses back in the 19th century and still have some over for a bag of chips on the way home.

In addition, Grace carefully, and brilliantly, stipulated an allowance for “all he could drink”. Here, clearly, was personal indulgence on a scale that would not be seen again for 70 years, when Led Zeppelin hit the road. Julie Kirkbride, eat your spare bedroom out.

We owe these dark revelations to Empire of Cricket, a history of the game and its expansion, offered by BBC Two as a kind of warm-up for the Ashes series and a handy debrief on the topic of how we all got to where we are, cricket-wise.

The narrative arc seemed fairly typical for an English sport: invented it, lost it, never quite got over it. Here's my tip - don't bother coming up with a sport. Wait for someone else in another country to do it. Then casually perfect it while they're still sitting in leather chairs and hugging themselves about how clever they've been. It seems to work out so much more happily for everyone concerned if you don't “give the game to the world” but simply snitch it a few years later.

The programme, almost inevitably, had its best spells in the archive library. It is, and always will be, a privilege to revisit the footage of Ian Botham at Headingley in 1981 and to remind ourselves how he was before fame and the Eighties happened to his hair and moustache, with such regrettable consequences.

It was similarly moving to see ancient footage of the mighty Grace (albeit playing cricket, alas, rather than drinking all he could) and a commercial in which Denis Compton broke off from a short stint of technical batting analysis to reach for a refreshing cigarette. Back then, they were “the Eshes”. These days they're the Ashes and the England captain stands around advertising Boss aftershave. It's not the same.

The programme got into a slightly messy rush at the end, showing, but not explaining, those chilling shots of Allen Stanford choppering into Lord's and of Botham, no less, helping him to whip the sheeting off his big plastic tub of quite possibly fraudulent money. But before we moved on (bound, in future weeks, for other lands, including, unfortunately, Australia, though I suppose one could hardly leave them out completely), the sonorous conclusion was: “Perhaps the home of cricket needs to leave the past behind.”

Hang on a minute, though. Do we not stand on the eve of the World Twenty20? And just a few hours before Empire of Cricket was broadcast, had not Sky Sports been showing a Twenty20 Cup match from Leicester? True, the sun was shining, the grass was green, shirtsleeves were, as one commentator pointed out, “the order of the day” and the peerless David “Bumble” Lloyd was greeting crashed boundaries with a cry of “Six penn'orth!” - a phrase as old and whiskery as Grace himself, and twice as reassuring. And, come to think of it, the PA was occasionally playing blasts of Sherbet's Howzat, which is pretty old, whiskery and reassuring, too.

At the same time, players were in reds, greens, blues, anything but whites, and a large number of them were daubed in zinc to within an inch of careers as children's entertainers. The umpires were dressed like greeters at a rodeo-themed family restaurant. Batsmen waited for duty in a clear plastic bus shelter. No one was without a pair of futuristic wraparound sunglasses and a baseball cap. Occasionally the commentators would have a word with the miked up captain during play (“I think anything under 140 we'd be happy with”). Graphics were informing us of the chosen weight of the players' bats and their favourite band (Foo Fighters, Alicia Keys, Counting Crows).

Did this look like a sport struggling to leave the past behind? If anything, it looked like a sport that had left the past behind a bit too quickly, possibly while clinging to the exhaust pipe of the Starship Enterprise during a critical thrust phase. What Grace (bat weight, whatever; favourite band, probably not Foo Fighters) would have had to say about it, we simply can't imagine.

Actually, we can imagine. He would have said: “Get me a first-class train ticket and anything I want from the at-seat trolley service of drinks and light refreshments.”