I HAVE NEVER QUITE come to terms with the turnaround that happened in the summer of 1999, when I went from being a winner to a choker in two swift weeks. One moment I was the kind of sportsman who would get to deuce in the deciding game, sneer at the pressure, laugh at the fear in the eyes of my opponent and then unleash two infinitely subtle slices to win the match; the next, I was as hapless and awkward as Jana Novotna in that infamous Wimbledon final.

Why was I so good under pressure in my pre-1999 incarnation? Because of the existence of what Denis Healey called a hinterland. The other players had only table tennis; I had Plato and Kant and the other joyous diversions of life at Oxford. Sometimes I wondered if I went to Balliol merely to provide a safety valve for sport; at other times I wondered if I played sport to provide a sanctuary from the inferences of philosophy.

Either way, it was neat symbiosis.

Ed Smith, the Middlesex cricket captain, is another sportsman with a hinterland, and he is perceptive enough to acknowledge its benign ramifications. In this elegant pageturner, he goes to some lengths to explain the advantages of “having a life” beyond the pitch. He terms it amateurism, and that conjures all the right images of wider worldliness and the contrast this cuts with the intensity of unadulterated professionalism.

Smith is a writer of considerable style and not a little insight. Once you've recovered from the irritation of his preposterously handsome photo on the inside back cover, you can glide through its lovingly interwoven chapters with a latte in one hand and a smile on your face.

It is rather like having a conversation with a witty and cultured don: rangy, urbane and with the pleasing bonus that one's world view has been expanded without it hurting the brain too much.

But does Smith miss a trick with his uninhibited praise for amateurism?

He closes the relevant chapter with the passage: “Playing with joy, without concern about the money you might earn or the criticism you may provoke, often makes sportsmen play better. An unburdened sportsman is more likely to play his best.” But there is a paradox here: if playing sport is one of many things in a sportsman's life, he is unlikely to train with the lunatic devotion that creates greatness; if it is the only thing in life, he is liable to be overwhelmed at the point of crisis.

What is required is a kind of double-think - you need to believe that sport is both everything and nothing. It is a trick that is as helpful to philosophers as to sportsmen (Hume mastered it: “I dine, I play a game of backgammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends; and when after three or four hours amusement, I return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strain'd, and ridiculous, that I cannot find it in my heart to enter into them any farther”). The day I became conscious of the psychic contradiction at the heart of sporting performance was the day I lost the ability to win.

Smith's other chapters concern such worthy subjects as the free market in sport (a force for good in many circumstances), luck (more important than we care to admit), sporting dominance (easier to accomplish in Don Bradman's day), winning streaks (the consequence of a willingness to embrace new ideas), cheating (sociological rather than legalistic in nature) and Zidane's head-butt (caused by his atavistic rage that the narrative of the day was being scripted by someone or something other than himself).

But perhaps the standout chapter is on history. Smith artfully uses four methodologies to analyse the causes of England's victorious Ashes campaign in 2005, and in so doing tells us everything we need to know about the inherent conceit of historical explanation. Was it because of great English players or new institutions like central contracts? Was it luck (Glenn McGrath's injury) or judgment? Smith demonstrates that ex-post rationalisation is endlessly malleable, which is why learning from history - sporting or otherwise - is the devil to achieve.

Sport tells us much about life. It is Smith's achievement to show us why.

What Sport Tells Us About Life by Ed Smith
Viking, £14.99; 208pp

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