Anyone know the Hindi for schadenfreude? Who could have seen that coming: certainly not your correspondent, who had invested some time ago in India to win the Cricket World Cup. Not to be, sadly, and the red-hot favourites were given an absolute pasting in their own backyard by a team of unfancied Aussies who had lost both their opening games of the tournament.

It certainly disproves the Samson theory of sporting excellence: in days of yore a sportsman’s luxurious mullet (look at rugby’s Mickey Skinner, or football’s Frank Worthington and Stan Bowles) often meant a similar lush on-field display. But Travis Head – no longer sporting his bushy 1970s porn star ’tache – put paid to that notion with a match-winning ton as well as a stunning piece of athleticism in the field to catch Rohit Sharma, India’s captain, who could scarcely believe what he saw.

It capped a particularly tangy trophy presentation which the Indian players couldn’t be bothered to watch

India’s strongman Prime Minister Narendra Modi doesn’t strike me as someone with a rip-roaring sense of humour, so it was pleasing to sense his fury as his national side choked at the end – and in a stadium named after him to boot. Looking as if he had just been slapped in the face with a wet fish, Modi handed Aussie skipper Pat Cummins the trophy and stomped off, leaving him alone on the podium as the fireworks went off.

It capped off a particularly tangy trophy presentation which the Indian players couldn’t be bothered to watch, sulking off to the dressing room while their fans booed the excellent (English) umpires, Richard Illingworth and Richard Kettleborough. But I expect I am not alone in feeling reasonably satisfied that one of the most arrogant sportsmen on the planet, Virat Kohli, for all his excellence, was left clutching a runners-up medal.

I may have been sceptical about the Las Vegas Grand Prix, but even the greats can get things wrong. Max Verstappen himself began race weekend criticising the event as ‘99 per cent show and 1 per cent sporting event’. At the end he was on top of the podium in an Elvis-themed suit after belting out ‘Viva Las Vegas’. The event itself was a thrilling spectacle, and for once an insanely dramatic race with the lead changing multiple times on the track, not just in the pit lane.

So chalk one up to Sin City, which clearly has designs on becoming one of the poles of the sports world. Along, oddly, with Riyadh. Could it be that all the big razzmatazz events in sport will soon be in one of those desert fastnesses? The Vegas GP will be Formula 1’s marquee event for years to come; Super Bowl 2024 is in Vegas; and the Oakland A’s baseball team will soon be pitching up there too. And don’t be surprised if a major cricket T20 tournament doesn’t make its presence felt. Up to now of course the city’s first love has been boxing, and there’s barely a major bout that hasn’t been held under the bright lights of the Strip.

But that is slowly changing as the big fights head to Riyadh for the biggest bucks. Tyson Fury’s bout with Ukraine’s Oleksandr Usyk will be held there in February, the first undisputed heavyweight championship of the world since 1999. Next month, on 23 December, big names like Anthony Joshua and Deontay Wilder are fighting on the same card in the Saudi Arabian capital.

Saudi will be staging the 2034 football World Cup while most of the world’s footballers head to its leagues for synapse-bending sums of money as soon as they start to feel their best days are behind them. The Gulf already has four F1 races and several big-money golf tournaments. So now Saudi has the cash and Vegas is the destination. Sport is changing. It’s a long way from the days when Stanley Matthews travelled to matches by bus, along with all the other fans.