Andrew Strauss has poured hundreds of thousands of pounds and convened a full roster of staff – covering every base from umpires to anti-corruption via the analyst – into his pet project, the reopening of cricket’s North-South divide, and thus was not about to let some rare desert rain stop the third and final match, even if it was a dead rubber.

After the South won twice in Dubai, a day game was delayed, condensed and the floodlights revved up, with the South eventually completing a clean sweep as the North fell 21 short of chasing 229 in 40 overs, thanks to some brilliant bowling from the 20-year-old leg‑spinner Mason Crane, who at one stage took four for one in 12 balls.

One of Strauss’s incentives was making it winner takes all, so while the Southerners share £50,000, the North leave with nothing. The response of the wider cricketing public has been a shrug. What’s the point? Why can’t I watch or – in the case of the Dubai games, which were not broadcast because of the excessive financial demands of the stadium – even listen to it? Why is no one there? Certainly, none of the budget went into marketing, but the England and Wales Cricket Board believes spectators and a TV broadcast are areas of growth now that their dry run has worked.

However, this event was never really about the wider cricketing public – it was about England’s inner sanctum. Strauss is committed to the venture for three years with the intention to broaden the playing base for the 2019 World Cup. It was for selectors and staff to get to know the next rung of players – whether on the field, over a beer or on the golf course – and for those players to appreciate the rigours of top‑level touring life. It was even to fuse the Lions and England programmes; the last time the Southern coaches Paul Farbrace and Andy Flower worked together was when playing in the same MCC team decades ago.

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Those wrapped up in the ultra-professional world of Team England took a peek into some of the chaotic corners of the county scene, such as the poor fielding, those who emerged from their winter hibernation sporting extra layers of insulation or the one who managed to miss the flight. The atmosphere was convivial but competitive and notes, you sensed, were constantly being taken. All those asked if they would like to play again agreed it had been an exercise with which it was worth persisting.

Strauss will assess how the next two years will work, but he is not wedded to the United Arab Emirates as the venue (the Caribbean is an option) or that it has to be March; indeed, England’s tour of New Zealand this time next year may preclude the involvement of Trevor Bayliss, for whom it is most valuable, and his coaching team. There is hope that the 2019 edition could be played in the months leading up to the World Cup, with most or all of England’s first-choice players available.

The cricket was intense, if at times one-sided, and certainly a step up from an average game in the unloved Royal London One-Day Cup. Generally, those closest to the England team – such as Toby Roland-Jones and Strauss’s official man of the series, Liam Dawson, who was superb with bat and ball and looks set to push Moeen Ali’s Champions Trophy place very hard – showed their class. With the bat, Ben Duckett flickered and Dawid Malan was wonderfully authoritative while Steven Finn bowled with rhythm and Mark Wood improved markedly in his second game, bowling with pace and snarl. Tim Bresnan showed what an estimable cricketer he is.

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For Bayliss, who knows so little of county cricket, there was a chance for a first viewing of Daniel Bell-Drummond, who followed up 92 in the first game with a composed 81 here, as well as Liam Livingstone and Tom Curran, who have had winters of such promise with the Lions, and Sam Northeast, a county star ignored by England since the Under‑19s. Bayliss will follow this up by, for the first time, spending the first few weeks of the county season touring the shires assessing contenders; there will be plenty more familiar faces now.

All of this, as many players astutely observed, only matters if James Whittaker and the selectors pick the best performers. It would be a surprise, now, if Curran and Livingstone do not make ODI debuts against Ireland in the first week of May. We should expect, too, a whole raft of newbies in the long summer’s last task, the ODI series against West Indies which, bafflingly, finishes with a day-nighter six miles from Southampton on 29 September. A month later England will have landed in Australia for the Ashes, which seems reason enough to rest plenty of all-formatters. The poverty of West Indies’ performances this month suggests second-stringers would find it a fruitful series and another opportunity to stake a claim for 2019.

One of those should be Crane, whose four wickets in the last game – having taken some tap in Dubai – trumped excellent performances from the North’s spinners, Graeme White and Josh Poysden. The North were cruising at 146 for two when Crane – fresh from his historic stint with New South Wales – intervened, bowling Sam Hain (round the legs) and Joe Clarke (pitching on leg and taking the top of off) with consecutive balls. Jack Leaning and Livingstone, deceived in the flight and stumped, were left baffled too.

There were so many questions at the start, but Crane provided exactly the kind of answer Strauss was after.