“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”

— Sir Winston Churchill

The most controversial yet legal form of dismissal in the noble man’s sport of cricket is commonly known as the “Mankad”.

However, the difference between what India bowler Vinoo Mankad did to the Australian Bill Brown in 1947 — twice, the second time in a Test match at the Sydney Cricket Ground — and what can be seen on our cricket grounds, and very rarely on the international circuit, is that the batsman had been warned repeatedly about leaving his ground too early to steal an advantage before he was eventually run out.

Mankading remains against the Spirit of Cricket but as of Sunday will become easier to effect when the Laws of the Game are updated by the Marylebone Cricket Club to allow for bowlers to enter their delivery stride before running out the non-striker — thus having a longer period to plan the act.

This in effect puts an added onus on batsmen to ensure that they do not leave their crease before the ball is bowled.

Our view is that it widens the path for our less cultured cricketers to legally cheat.

The dark arts are very familiar to many in this country whom we have held in high regard in the past or present, but reputation and popularity cannot be used as a shield to protect the ethically challenged. We should not be in a rush to celebrate the worst excesses of behaviour, whether they be marginally within the rules or not.

The legendary Indian batsman Sunil Gavaskar has protested that mankading be given a different name because it tarnishes the reputation of a man who in his own right would be known otherwise as an all-time great.

May we suggest instead “Atychiphobia” — the fear of failure.

For that in essence is what it is: a cowardly act sought after for the most part and activated only in the wake of all other “legal” means failing — ie, the technical skills you are taught as a young cricketer and what you are meant to practise assiduously in midweek — and, notably, when the game is on the line.

It is what prompted West Indies bowler Keemo Paul to run out Richard Ngarava to end the pivotal Under-19 World Cup group match in February 2016, when the Zimbabwe batsman had his bat on the line — clearly not looking to gain an unfair advantage, “but the line belongs to the umpire”.

Zimbabwe lost by two runs and West Indies progressed into the knockout stage, before going on to lift the trophy.

That young West Indies team were slaughtered in the media and shunned at the tournament hotel in the immediate aftermath of the controversial win, and rightly so, while those more sympathetic souls responded in sheepish manner with the weak “it’s in the Laws of the Game” defence.

Dominic Cork, the former England all-rounder who was on hand to witness the “feat” as a commentator, probably put it best:

“I feel sorry for Zimbabwe. Of course, there has to be a winner. I’m not sure I am particularly happy with the way that this game has come to an end, and how this last wicket has come about.

“It doesn’t sit well with me as a former professional cricketer, international cricketer. There are ways to win the game and that just isn’t the way of doing it.”

The two incidents that most leave a sour taste in the mouth from the 2017 domestic cricket season both were brought about by Bailey’s Bay. Odd when you consider their coach, Irving Romaine, is one of the most respected on the island and one who you would generally dissociate from the dark arts.

That notwithstanding, it was Bay who attempted, and succeeded in, running out Lionel Cann after the St David’s batsman was bowled off a no-ball in the first round of the Eastern Counties Cup, and paving the way for the cup to change hands.

That wicketkeeper Sinclair Smith attempted the run-out in the first place was poor form in a sporting sense — as soon as he touched it, the ball should have been ruled dead, and the batsman was not attempting a run in any event.

That the appeal was erroneously upheld by the on-field umpires compounded the sense that there is a moral bankruptcy that has seeped into the DNA of the Bermudian cricketer.

Winning at all costs while producing little by way of genuine quality is a poisonous concoction that sports lovers are being made to digest — especially those who strive to see competition played in the right spirit.

Fast forward to Saturday at St John’s Field in the season-ending Champion of Champions competition, and Bailey’s Bay were in the thick of it again with a mankading dismissal that won the semi-final against Southampton Rangers. The offender, Coolidge Durham, made a pig’s ear of explaining away something that was so obviously wrong — morally, if not by Laws of the Game that are gradually being bent towards the Australian “anything goes” way of thinking.

“A non-striker who is out of his crease before the point of release is either taking an advantage or is acting carelessly, and runs the risk of being legitimately run out,” read a July 2016 statement from the World Cricket committee, which includes three Australians in Ricky Ponting, Rod Marsh and Tim May.

Durham told The Royal Gazette: “In this situation I felt we had a couple of hard decisions, so my team encouraged me to do what we had to do. It was a cup game and may be looked at as outside the character of the game [you think?], but the new format of the game is built and structured for more excitement with the 50-over and 20-over games.

“These type of things you have to be prepared for because the game is fast and furious. I didn’t really want to do it but they [Southampton Rangers] are a big rival of ours. It was just the energy of the moment.”

Some rationale, that.

Southampton had little room for complaint, ethically, because chief among their number is Janeiro Tucker — “JT Captain, Leader, Legend”, with copyright apologies to John Terry — who has performed the act while on international duty to make the Bermuda name mud in the eyes of anyone from Jersey. It would have elicited talk of pots and kettles.

What was particularly embarrassing about that episode during Bermuda’s failed attempt to escape World Cricket League Division Four last November is that this was a match our boys were winning by a country mile. So no need at all to invite such derision.

But because mankading has become the done thing domestically, exposing our cricket as not only regressive but immature and uncultured too, there was no real fallout and clubs, coaches, umpires and the Bermuda Cricket Board proceed as though rampant poor sportsmanship is all part of the game.

It is a far cry from what is seen elsewhere, although you do not have to go too far to spot examples of true sportsmanship.

Flora Duffy, who will absolutely hate being held up as the antithesis to our graceless cricketers, is a world champion. She is also utterly ruthless in how she goes about her business on the triathlon course — fast swim, straight to the front on the bike, taking no prisoners, and metronomic on the run.

It is a strategy that has served her well since 2015 when “combating Flora” had to be part of the game plan for anyone who aspired to a top-three finish. But after it is all said and done, after she has played fair and square — by all the rules, seen and unseen — Duffy is the ultimate lady.

It is not all about her.

Two Saturdays ago she crossed the line in Rotterdam as a repeat winner of the ITU World Triathlon Series. She might have been well within her rights to go on a celebratory run, caught up in her own sense of achievement. Which is significant, by the way.

But it is not all about her. So she waited and waited and waited for the next two finishers to come across the line and for those farther down the road who featured prominently in the overall standings but were not at their best during the Grand Final.

It is the measure of the woman, and it says a little something about her sport.

There is no sport in Bermuda, the biggest rivalries included, where the stakes are so high that similar bonhomie, camaraderie and touches of class cannot become the norm rather than the exception.