And the extraordinary men’s pairs final played out at the Broadbeach Bowls Club venue at the Gold Coast Games on Monday (April 9) provided prime evidence of the validity of that chess comparison - even if at one point it looked more like lightning chess.

After just five ends the Scottish pairing of Alex Marshall and Paul Foster, whose excellence in recent years has established them as bowls royalty, were making what looked like a royal progress to a third, and second successive Commonwealth title. Marshall himself was closing on a record fifth gold for a Scottish athlete at the Games.

Already 5-1 up, this prodigious pair - Foster lean and intense, Marshall stocky and constitutionally unable to deliver any bowl without discarding his cap and freeing his reddening pate to the Gold Coast sun - held five shots.

So the score appeared likely to move on - magnificently or calamitously depending from which side you viewed it - to 10-1. Nightmarish indeed for the Welsh pair of Daniel Salmon and Marc Wyatt, who were palpably struggling to read the pace of the shorn green as the heat, and the weight of feet, began to bring mysterious moisture out of the hastening turf.

Salmon, 18 years the younger of the Welsh pairing at 22, displayed his dismay on his open face, glancing to his elder compadre for guidance – or perhaps pardon, as he bowled short on a number of occasions. And when he had set the jack so strongly that it rolled right off the green, thus ceding the privilege to the Scots, with its accompanying bonus of having the last shot of the end, he looked briefly lose to tears.

The sun glared down.

And with a landslide of points tipping towards the Scottish pair, Wyatt delivered the first of a series of wondrous shots that turned disaster into, if not triumph, then at least the promise of contention.

With one drive, the whole match was broken and re-set. Incredibly, Wales had finished the end gaining two. Yes, bowls is like a form of chess. But in bowls, if needs must, you are allowed to upset the board and start all over again…

The charge went through the match. Salmon began to relax and show the talent that had been deployed all the way through the competition.

Although the Scots won a point in the next end, the Welshmen, belief growing, won points at the next seven ends with the Scots failing to score.

The Scottish shoulders had dropped. Foster looked grim. Marshall’s mouth tightened. Salmon, in contrast, was beginning to look positively jaunty, leaping in acknowledgement as his team-mate’s efforts curved unerringly into good places before delivering more of the same.

But it wasn’t the end. Such was the Scots’ talent and experience that they restored their fortunes to the point where Marshall was able to level the scores to 10-10 with two ends left.

Wyatt had to deliver the most delicate of draws with the last Welsh effort to steer the jack away from his opponents’ bowls. He managed it - and Marshall’s own final effort failed to disturb that cosy relationship.  Scottish silver rather than gold, for once…

The frustration for the Scottish pair, so dominant so early, must have been immense. With no Olympic presence, these Games are the multi-sport peak for bowls. But other than the gruff shunting of woods at the conclusion of each end, with occasional use of boot, you would not have known how they were feeling.

Had it been a tennis match, the umpire might have been in danger from a thwacked stray ball. Had it been a football match, there would surely have been some reckless tackles flying in - swiftly excused by commentators as an inevitable reflection of frustration.

But this, very happily, was bowls. And this, very gloriously, was the Commonwealth Games.

Why the comparisons with the Olympics? Or World Championships? They are irrelevant.

Why does the Commonwealth Games have to be of interest in the United States to be valid? That is a nonsense.

The Commonwealth Games, which so often appears able to live up to its alternative description of the Friendly Games, is hugely important for that very reason.

Public opinion in Britain already appears to be turning against the cold-eyed calculations that have lain behind funding decisions for escalating national success at the Olympics.

How engaged are we as spectators in medal totals? You can’t "win" Olympics or Commonwealth Games in the way you can a football match. And if you do - so what?

As it happens, the men’s pairs final at these latest Commonwealth Games was world-class. But that is not the true measure of a genuine sporting experience. That lies in its competitiveness, what it draws out of protagonists and spectators, and the spirit in which it is played.

The lawn bowls men’s pairs final simply delivered yet another reason why we should cherish the Commonwealth Games.