On the sidelines Jim Edwards, the acknowledged father of ecotourism, stands square-shouldered and stoutly British: "Cartier were pathetic," he shouts, but is delighted nonetheless by the spectacle. Jim Edwards is the boss of Tiger Tops, a luxury jungle lodge deep in the Royal Chitwan National Park. He created the Elephant Polo Championships in 1982 with horse polo scion, James Manclark, to raise awareness of the Trust for Nature Conservation that Edwards founded in 1980. (Jim Edwards died in Nepal in 2009 aged 75).

Elephant polo is played in the image of pony polo with just a few concessions to the size of the mounts. The field is smaller (about the size of a soccer pitch) and etiquette prohibits knocking opponents from their mounts. (It's a long way to fall from the back of an elephant.) Players are roped to a cushion on the elephant's back and ride behind a mahout, who guides the beast around the field. This frees the player to concentrate on wielding the long bamboo polo stick with enough skill or luck to strike the ball as it rolls between shuffling elephants' feet.

Nic Ellis, who swapped cameras for a polo stick to make a guest appearance for a couple of chukkas likened it to playing golf with a fishing rod, while riding from the roof of a moving Land Rover.

This championship ran for three days, and it was not until the third misty morning that the Cartier team achieved some semblance of glory. They pulled a score from the hat against Jim Edwards's own team, the Tiger Tops Tuskers. At two-nil down in the second chukka Cartier mounted a desperate attack on the home side's goals. While Billy Connolly offered vocal encouragement from his position back in defense, Ringo Starr directed the play up front: "Whack it, Barb," he cried as the ball rolled to the foot of Barbara Bach's elephant.

But Barbara was disoriented: "Where is it ... what's going on?"

The captain was courageous. He charged into the fray and emerged tap-tap-tapping the ball ahead of his lumbering mount. Max Boyce was on the wing. Ringo passed like a veteran. Max took a lusty, lucky, swipe and the ball whistled through the uprights to rapturous applause.

It was not enough to win the match, but it allowed the team to dismount and queue for their ritual Bloody Marys with a sense of achievement. Olympic they might not be, but their names were, like the elephants, vehicles for a cause – to raise awareness of wildlife conservation and wilderness regions under threat of irretrievable destruction.