But by that logic, wouldn't 'cricket, rugby and football with all nations' suggest that we're keeping cricket to ourselves?
Absolutely not. It's a list. There's no reason to distinguish between the second and first items. To do that, you'd need:
"Cricket, and rugby and football with all nations."
There's a weird reluctance to use "and" twice in such cases, but that's wrong because, in the case above, you have a list with a sublist:
Cricket, and (rugby and football with all nations).
So each list only has "and" once. The outer list has an Oxford comma in a two-item list, which is unusual but helps parsing when things get complex.
What is true is that my example:
"Cricket, rugby and football with all nations."
leaves open to the reader to work out, from the context, whether we're letting the others play one sport or three (but it can't be two). The only way I can see around that is:
"Cricket, rugby and football, with all nations."
But in any case, this is the opposite of the situation that I was talking about. The general point, as I see it, is that:
- commas are there to help the reader to parse the sentence (or, in this case, the phrase) as quickly and accurately as possible
- rigid rules about use or not of the Oxford comma fail to achieve that
- the 50p coin is a nice example that demonstrates that Oxford commas, used selectively, can help; sadly, it makes the point by failing to use one