I think possibly the cutest thing I have seen in the past twelve months is a three year old Australian boy dressed in pads and gloves with a little Kookaburra bat playing cricket in a net with his ma. He was quite happy to play act and pretend when there was no tennis ball to be thrown too.

This coupled with the Viking in the next net wearing a yellow and pink (separate) pair of pads made my Saturday morning. Especially as there was some sun. Shame about losing 3-2 to the Windies but could have done with Mo batting in the fifth as he did in the fourth.

Not so much roaring into the 20s as slinking.

We all love The Ashes but we’ve not won Down Under an awful lot in my lifetime. I turned on my Christmas present of a radio on Boxing Day 1986 to hear that Botham and Small had both taken five apiece. Happy Days. I think the next high point was when I watched KP on TV (C4) tonking it about in 2005. Big gap. Big shame.

There must be people out there who have followed the England team, and chosen 86/87 and 10/11 as tours to follow. I would not only like to go to the Casino with them, but listen to their share tips and and horses to back.

What do we take from a tour like that? Here are a list of one word / short rhetorical questions :

Foakes?

Selection?

Training in Aus?

Blame Covid?

Win or lose, I still love listening to TMS.

I think there were parts of Fred’s early time at Lancs I would like to have read more about, and of course 6 extra chapters on 2005 wouldn’t have gone amiss, but entertaining, and he seems like a man who just gets on with getting the very most out of life.

My favourite lyric by a country mile was ‘Don’t look back to Langer’, to be sung in the style of Oasis.