It should be no surprise to hear that, even in these difficult economic times, sport is proving to be almost recession-proof.

Of course, it cannot be completely impervious to stringent circumstances. Yet paradoxically, it is precisely because people all around the world are so worried about pressing financial matters that the camaraderie, the emotion, the cut and thrust and the occasional euphoria associated with popular sporting events provide a much-needed opportunity to escape everyday drudgery and, if only briefly, enjoy the ride on an emotional roller-coaster.

On both sides of the Atlantic, fans of two forms of football are gearing up for another season with probably even more gusto than usual. For millions in the United States, the next four months of National Football League action, culminating in the Super Bowl, are weekly occasions for celebration when there is so little otherwise to celebrate. The same can be said ahead of another English football campaign, where the fortnightly pilgrimage to the nearby club ground, be it mighty Manchester United or humble Aldershot,  gives stressed-out parents and their children some desperately needed relaxation time, even if they end up heading home cursing about a referee who must be blind.

So it’s fair to say that in good times and bad, people will always have an appetite for sport of one form or the other. Yet while it may be recession-proof, it certainly isn’t bacchanal-proof, and those officials and administrators who show little or no concern for the paying patron or wider audience via the media, should not be surprised when their callous disregard for fairness, justice and integrity backfires in the shape of dwindling interest in whatever product they are peddling.

A long-time school friend advised me on Monday that, after viewing the meaningless Twenty20 victory by the West Indies over Bangladesh on Sunday at Warner Park Stadium, and taking into consideration the disinterest of fans in St Vincent, Grenada and to a lesser extent, Dominica, in the previous games, he had been moved to write a letter to the editor asking if the first-choice Caribbean cricketers would ever consider apologising to citizens of those territories for further devaluing an already low-level series by their absence.

We all know what the answer to that is, and he does as well by the way. I just hope that, if the letter does appear in print, it will not be noticed by anyone at the West Indies Cricket Board because I’m sure my friend will be flown to St Lucia immediately for a nice warm loving embrace - with photographers in position, of course - from Julian Hunte. Worse yet if it’s picked up by the West Indies Players Association, for you can expect them to ignore the rhetorical theme and proceed on their own cynical response with a diatribe about who should really be apologising.

It would be nice if we could all draw a line under West Indies cricket and shift focus to other sporting pursuits, reasonably confident that the integrity of the contest will remain paramount. No chance of that though. Not with charades, farces and just plain outrageous situations of the kind that prevailed last Friday night in Chaguanas when, by all accounts, Venezuela’s Ana Fernandez completely out-boxed Ria Ramnarine only to be left in tears by the classic hometown decision with two of the three judges somehow ruling in the Trinidadian’s favour.

Yet to compound what is nothing short of an absolute disgrace, we have Dr Calvin Inalsingh, World Boxing Association supervisor for the fight, being quoted as saying ’...if we allowed this to continue to happen, if we get a big world title fight, no one will want to come here to fight.’

So if the purse is good and boxers from outside feel that the losers’ stake is enough of an incentive to come, even if they are bound to be robbed blind by the judges, does that mean we don’t have a problem? What about the basic right and wrong of the situation for its own sake? What about the fact that this is nothing new on the local boxing scene and nothing ever really seems to be done about it?

But sporting bacchanal is not, has never been and never will be the sole preserve of these parts.

Let’s go to the Eternal City, Rome, where the officials of global swimming have just completed a show of such spectacular obscenity that the International Olympic Committee would have been on their case in no time flat if they weren’t one of the ’respectable’ sports.

For the 13th FINA World Championships, restrictions previously placed on controversial 100 per cent polyurethane bodysuits were lifted. As a direct result, 43 world records were broken in eight days of competition with experts predicting that many of them will stand for a very long time because FINA, the world swimming organisation, will be putting the bans back in place next year.

Imagine the reaction if the IOC and IAAF announced at the start of 2012 that stanozolol, the anabolic steroid that propelled Ben Johnson to 9.79 seconds in the men’s 100-metre final the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, would be allowed leading up to the Games in London but banned immediately after. Almost everyone would condemn them and lament that greed and madness were about to turn the most high-profile spectacle of the Summer Olympics into a pappyshow.

Well that’s just what we saw in Rome.

Seems you’re also required to turn a blind eye in enjoying recession-proof sport.