Ah, the sound of commuter on concrete

A full off-the-pavement strike against a young investment broker earns you maximum points

By the time you read this, Rio Ferdinand, the footballer with a rather odd mouth, will have decided (or not decided) to leave (or stay with) Leeds United. A British golfer will have triumphed (or almost triumphed, or faded disappointingly) in the British Open. Hope (or heartbreak) will have been reported among our athletes as they limber up for the Commonwealth Games. Whatever the sporting news, it will be in the headlines and probably on the front page. Suddenly, in a matter of months – without Britain actually winning anything – we have become a nation of sports addicts. Politics are predictable, all is quiet in Celebrityville, so TV and the press have turned their attention to the activities of the fast, the muscular, the jumpers, kickers and hitters.

It all happened so quickly. One moment, we had a reasonably balanced attitude towards sport, the next strangers were stopping one another in the street to ask whether Tim Henman still had a stomach upset or whether Keano was going to be accepted by Manchester United fans after his World Cup shame.

It is not healthy, this new emotional dependence on sport. It happened some years ago in Australia; now a small number of brilliant sporting heroes compete on behalf of the country while the rest of the nation sits slumped in front of the TV as tennis courts become clogged with weeds and kangaroos graze on cricket pitches.

Even the sporting professionals have recognised the dangers of taking sport too seriously. This weekend, a mighty lorry-load of 150,000 free condoms was on its way the athletes' village in Manchester, to tide them over – at 30 condoms per competitor – a busy 10 days at the Commonwealth Games. Of the 72 countries competing, there is a surprise favourite for the condom-use contest. According to Durex, New Zealanders, whose national average for sexual activity is 115 times a year, lead the field, while, excitingly, Britain are close behind with a pre-games average of 107 per year. Social life among the athletes is said by the former swimmer Sharron Davies to be "an awesome experience".

Journalists whose job it is to take sport seriously have been nagging at us all summer about how kicking or hitting a ball can be a metaphor full of significance for the way we live, but on this occasion they could actually be right. The randy athletes squaring up to one another in Manchester are, in their simple, muscle-bound way, showing us that the best games can be played without picking up a bat, racket, ball or baton. Surely it is time for us to follow these sporting heroes, stop gawping at them on the TV and make our own games.

Thanks to a safety campaign by the transport unions, which involves cutting down the chance of accidents on the Underground by not running trains at all, those who are obliged to walk to work have been given the chance to play commuterball, an offshoot of the violent and futuristic contact sport rollerball. The simple, if somewhat brutal, rules of commuterball stipulate a certain number of points for every clash, minor injury or, at best, removal of another commuter from the pavement into the road. Hits against pensioners or children rate the lowest score while a full off-the-pavement strike against a young investment broker as he whinnies into his mobile earns maximum points.

Then, of course, there are foxes to hassle. These animals have taken to roaming suburbia in search of babies to bite and kittens to carry away. Although hunting with dogs may soon become illegal, there are no laws against gangs of men, women and children pursuing these threadbare marauders through the streets, smoking them out of their earths, and giving them a thoroughly unpleasant time. Foxes will rarely be caught, of course, but thanks to the sport of fox-hassling, they can be given enough of a fright to persuade them to stick to their natural diet of garbage.

Interest in the traditional British pastime of pocket billiards has been revived by the publication of a guide for novelists called The Joy of Writing Sex. Unfortunately the author, Elizabeth Benedict, laboured under the familiar American delusion that the sport is connected in some euphemistic way to masturbation. As any public schoolboy will know, pocket billiards has no sexual connotation whatsoever, but is merely a more interesting version of solitaire. The more advanced mixed-doubles version of the game, played with both pockets and two people, is said to be as subtle and yet physically demanding as any conventional sport.

Purists will argue that these games have yet to be accorded official status, but then the same was once said about beach volleyball or synchronised swimming. Who knows, with a bit of practice, you could be there at the next games, representing the nation at commuterball, fox-hassling or pocket billiards. Think of the glory. Think of the excitement. Think of the free condoms.

terblacker@aol.com