India, March 17 -- When an Excel sheet landed in my inbox from a random galaxy far, far away, the Pavlovian response said delete. Excel sheets are not my strong suit in any case, as they threaten to self-destruct like Mission Impossible messages if you hit some wrong key. But this one promised to contain a listing of the number of court cases connected to sport now on in India - naturally, it had to be attempted. Once its intricate cell biology had been deciphered, the Excel sheet clearly indicated a virus in the system.

Before going into details, full props to whoever was behind the eye-watering work required to arrive at this summary of the cases related to sport featuring state intervention that currently are in India's courts. In dis...