THIS weekend, the public were treated to sporting pantomime and sporting theatre.

The pantomime came in the form of the Stanford $20m match in Antigua with Lewis Hamilton claiming the Formula One Drivers' Championships in the most dramatic fashion as theatre at its finest.

One was sport in it's most grotesque form, the other was pure drama.

Firstly, let's look at the Stanford shenanigans.

I said in a recent blog that I thought it was an exercise in greed and I have no reason to change my mind.

After a week of farce (the Stanford Wives incident), complaints about the poor facilities, a flat track and largely dull cricket, Saturday night brought a one-off match for the richest prize in team sport.

Arlo White, a summariser of Radio Five Live, summed it up best describing the game as "unwatchable" because of the tension the game would emanate.

Although I agree it was unwatchable, I think it was the players, their families and bank managers that would have felt tense.

For the rest of us, it was unwatchable because nobody cared. There were no Ashes or Series win up for grabs and therefore no national pride.

It was just a souped-up friendly and about as welcome to a cricket-loving public as teenage trick or treaters banging on your door wearing a bin-bag as a costume.

From the moment a slightly manic-looking Sir Allen Stanford (he's not even a real Knight of the Realm) landed at Lord's to launch the Super Series, it's been a hindrance to English cricket and I'm delighted it's over.

Now we can get back to the real business of a two-Test tour of India starting later this month.

Then, on Sunday, Hamilton became the first British driver since Damon Hill in 1996 to be crowned world champion.

It was a gut-wrenching couple of hours that only exploded into life in the last three or four minutes.

Call me an old cynic, but I thought it was beyond the realms of possibility that Hamilton could not just catch but pass Timo Glock to grab the all-important fifth place.

It just seemed too convenient. Yes he may have had the wrong tyres on but it just seems to perfect. I've read that the McLaren team were tracking Glock and were confident they would pass him.

If that's genuinely the case the Hamilton and his team are master tacticians and deserve all the plaudits comeing to them.

And there's been virtually no questioning of the incident other than to criticise Hamilton for living in a tax haven, which also seems odd.

But, having said that, who cares. It made for great TV and Britain has a new world champion.

Hamilton realised a dream and worked tirelessly over the season to make it come true and went some way to erasing the stain on the psyche left by Stanford.