TOMORROW it starts. After all the hand-wringing and even more hands-on toil for hundreds of drafted-in workers, no doubt on princely wages (as if), the Commonwealth Games will open in the Indian city of Delhi.

But can a sports tournament have been subjected to such blinding scrutiny? The weeks leading up to tomorrow’s opening ceremony have been riddled with criticism and recrimination.

There were – still are – genuine fears about security with the sub-Continent hardly the least volatile environment.

But uppermost has been the principal complaint about the ill-preparedness of the hosts.

Unedifying photographs from various blocks of the athletes’ villages generated outrage back in the former home of the Empire.

Some nations demurred as to whether they may even go out to Delhi. Some individuals, meanwhile, actually withdrew citing injury, or in the case of world and Olympic gold medallist Phillips Idowu forthrightly and honestly revealing he would not be going because of fears for his safety.

At one point there was little to disparage the candid Idowu as dread that some facilities were far from finished was dramatically evidenced when a footbridge to one of the venues collapsed like so much rotten match-wood.

Cue a bedlam of activity as workers were rushed in to get everything up to western standard. Such bad publicity was not what any self-respecting nation with bombastic pretensions of being a super-power wanted. In its latest showcase to the globe India is desperate to prove it can host a major sporting event.

Shots of falling structures and scraggy shower-blocks and loos do not make for a positive spin.

But as deadlines encroached the work has been carried out and to the apparent satisfaction of the powers that govern the Commonwealth Games.

The distasteful build-up beggars the question as what were inspectors from the Commonwealth Games committee doing in the months and weeks ahead of tomorrow’s start. Surely they had a view, an opinion, a hunch that may be all was not well in Delhi.

But there is even a bigger issue and one not simply confined to tomorrow’s Games that archaically, yet quaintly, celebrates the coming together of former member states of what was the biggest empire in world history.

As hosts, India will have made a considerable outlay to have the honour of staging the games. Those expenses surely would have increased many-fold in the past fortnight’s rush of meeting tomorrow’s deadline.

It’s the same – albeit on a much more financially fearful scale – for the Olympic Games and the World Cup.

Right now, in every corner of the globe, there’s fierce politicking and lobbying for the privilege, right, honour to stage Olympiads and World Cups spanning across the next decade and beyond.

Only this week there was a story that England would not offer to join the wannabes for the 2022 World Cup provided the USA did the same for the 2018 bid, thereby paving the way clearer for either country in their respective pushes.

Even the bids that are made by rival nations to be the centre of such towering tournaments can run into millions of pounds, dollars, euros, zloty, barts, or rupees.

Then the lucky country who gets the nod is committed to yet more expense, some of it potentially crippling.

One solution could be to establish one – and one alone – permanent centre to always play host to an Olympic Games, a World Cup, even a Commonwealth Games.

Take the latter. If the Commonwealth are united in wanting Delhi to succeed, then why not make Delhi the spiritual base of the Games?

Each time the Games were held the facilities would have been regularly upgraded establishing an ultra-modern and safe haven for competitors and spectators.

Greece, the home of the ancient Olympiad, would be the perfect host for the four-yearly five-ringed circus and would also deliver a much-needed lift to the economy of a country arguably struggling the most in the current economic crisis.

And what of the World Cup? Any permanent home surely should be in Brazil, the spiritual heartbeat of the competition.

If that proposal was not to Brazil’s liking, then confer on the eternal city of Rome the base for the football fiesta in tribute to Europe’s most successful World Cup nation.

I acknowledge how South Africa as a nation benefited greatly from this summer’s World Cup, but that particularly tournament which churned out yet more incredible profits for Fifa, was arguably the last outpost that international football has touched, apart, from say, China.

So, let’s get rid of this headlong dash into cash ruin once and for all and take a permanent stand, which would also negate any claims of corruption and vote-rigging.