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And now we return to an occasional series entitled “It’s only football that’s bent”.

Last week the Association of Tennis Professionals cleared Nikolay Davydenko after a 12-month investigation into suspicious betting patterns surrounding his match against Martin Vassallo Arguello at a tournament in Sopot, Poland, on August 2, 2007. Arguello was also cleared, as were all other individuals connected to the event. “The ATP has exhausted the avenues of inquiry open to it and the investigation is now concluded,” a statement read.

Davydenko was rated No 5 in the world at the time, Arguello was No 87. In football terms, going on yesterday’s league tables, that makes Manchester City the equivalent of Davydenko and Lincoln City the equal of Arguello. Say that match was taking place and Betfair received ten times the usual amount of activity on its exchange, some £3.4 million with, inexplicably, most of the money going on Lincoln. And imagine if Manchester City took the lead, as Davydenko did by winning the first set, yet still the punters were piling on the team lying sixth from bottom in what used to be the fourth division, as happened when Davydenko played Arguello. Imagine then that Lincoln not only equalised (Arguello won the second set), but City walked off the pitch, as Davydenko did in the third set, citing injury.

Do you think we would accept at face value the explanation that a few spectators may have overheard Mark Hughes, the City manager, talking about fitness problems before the game, as Davydenko suggests occurred when supporters listened in on a conversation he had with his wife in the stands in Sopot? No, me neither.

That is why we should be grateful for our knowledge that only football wallows in the murky depths of corruption; for, if we did not know this, we could jump to all sorts of hasty conclusions about the noble, decent and resolutely upstanding sport of tennis.