What is the principal reason for running a professional sport? Is it to make money for everybody involved? That is certainly a legitimate aspect of most professions. Or is there something bigger involved? These questions come to mind as the International Cricket Council continues to state the primacy of Test cricket.

The Test series between India and Australia reaches its conclusion today and it has been intermittently enthralling, intermittently filled with brilliance on both sides.

The only thing that has marred the series has been the absence of anyone watching it at the grounds. These fraught matches, the frenzied appeals, the furious blows, the stupendous efforts have taken place against an eerie silence, the ball rocketing in among empty seats and the occasional abandoned bottles of the Indian soft drink Thums-Up.

It is like the tree that falls in the deserted forest: does it make any sound at all if there is no one there to hear it? I have no idea, that's the point of the question. The question of the primacy of Test cricket, then, is nothing to do with public demand. It is, as much as anything, a question of player demand.

Most players are agreed that the complexity and infinite variability of Test-match cricket make it the highest form of the game. It's just that fewer spectators are interested in the higher form of the game, at least as a paying spectacle. The primacy of Test cricket is being maintained, but it is for reasons other than spectacle or money.

Is it legitimate to run a professional sport for the pursuit of excellence? Is this pursuit more important than the pursuit of money? Is player satisfaction more important than the gratification of your clients? Do the beliefs of your core constituency matter more than the fleeting thrills of the floating voters? After England have played the one-day matches in India, they will play a Test “series” - two matches - which will be be much richer and more satisfying. It will also be poorly attended.

Cricket strives for excellence by means of the Test matches. In this way it maintains one of its most important assets, its continuity with the distant past. But all the time, the matter of mere excellence is increasingly marginalised. The same process has already happened in football; with the invention of the penalty shoot-out, excellence was exchanged for spectacle and drama.

Twenty20 is the penalty shoot-out of cricket, and it's where the money is. Is the idea of sport as “the pursuit of excellence” woefully out of date?

Islanders embrace the future

It was a joy to see the Pacific Islanders play at Twickenham at the weekend. Samoa, Tonga and Fiji provide us with some of the finest players on the planet: as international teams, outside the seven-a-side game, they don’t really cut it at the top.

This combined side has great possibilities and although they were a scratch lot, they certainly had their moments and gave huge delight on Saturday.

I’d be deeply pleased if this side could become as West Indies are in cricket: small population, huge commitment and a serious force in the game. For a start, it may stop them magically turning into All Blacks the minute they show a bit of promise.

A strong Islanders side competing alongside the southern hemisphere’s top three of Australia, New Zealand and South Africa would be a glorious thing.

Competitive Dad: driving force or a huge turn off?

It was a reader who gave me an unexpected clue over the reservations some people have about Lewis Hamilton. The Briton won the Formula One drivers' championship last week, as you may have heard, and there was a rather unexpected outbreak of coolness as a response. And though - like the Frenchman who always thought of sex - my first instinct is to think of this as a race issue, I don't think that's right.

In sport, at least, there is always a place open for unwhite sports stars: Dame Kelly Holmes, Monty Panesar and even a gushingly warm welcome to the rehabilitated Emile Heskey. Instead, my correspondent suggested that it is something to do with Hamilton's dad.

He may have a point. We have deep suspicions of sporting parents, of people who play too prominent a role in their offspring's sporting life. The cut-away to the tennis parent at Wimbledon is always something that gets our hackles up: Richard Williams writing messages for the cameras, Gloria Connors shouting “come on Jimbo”, Damir Dokic getting carted away by the police.

Perhaps it is because the appearance of manipulation intrudes on the one-sided intimacy we enjoy with sporting heroes. Perhaps too prominent a parent stops us identifying with the offspring's triumphs.

Perhaps we feel excluded, as if Hamilton wasn't doing this for us, but for someone else entirely.

It is undeniable that most high achievers in sport had a very solid parental support. The question of when support comes to shove is something that all households with exceptionally gifted children have to work out for themselves. David Beckham, Jonny Wilkinson, Rebecca Adlington: these people were helped to their achievements by parents. Whether these parents were ambitious for themselves or disinterestedly for their children is impossible for anyone to say.

Anthony Hamilton is a very visible figure, always there and always standing out in the crowd, and always ready to say a cheery word to the cameras. This for some reason alienates sympathy, detracts from the achievements of his son. Parental support is something we'd rather not know about.

Page-turners with a wit that proved over the Hill

I don't like books that make me think. This was the view of the narrator's father in Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time: in fact, Powell continues, he pursued his life with increasing care to avoid anything at all that induced “this disturbing mental effect”. It seems to me that the judges for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year share much of the view.

Neither of the best sports books I have come across this year has made it from the longlist to the shortlist. Both are books about ideas. It seems as if the judges like to smell the sweaty armpits of the writer, and don't count thinking as working. Musa Okwonga's book, A Cultured Left Foot, debates the questions of what it is that makes a great footballer; Ed Smith's What Sport Teaches Us About Life is about practically every other question in sport. The chapter on history and sport is nothing less than a triumph.

If you seek wit, brilliance, serious thought and stuff you wish you'd thought of for yourself, devour both these books at your earliest convenience. If you don't like books that make you think, the William Hill judges will put you on the right track.

- Arsenal’s victory over Manchester United on Saturday at least means we can keep the theme of aesthetic perfection bubbling away across the football season. Arsenal always remind me of the demolished bank in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. “What happened to the old bank? It was beautiful!” “People kept robbing it.” “It’s a small price to pay for beauty.”