It was teatime down under and England were showing microscopic shoots of recovery with the willow, already beginning to weep, over a woeful attempt to prise the mythical tiny urn of victory from the hands of the Australians.

It was before dawn in the United Kingdom. I woke on high alert in the darkness concerned a stray contact lens might be trapped in the upper eyelid, then took the executive decision to switch on and watch the inevitable rear end collapse.

As the silent footage from past Ashes head to heads from the 80’s screened during tea break, watching a revolving roll call of legendary cricketers leave the crease, the missing lens stung with a memory of childhood…

…of re-enacting this famous clash of the colonies on a narrow and broken flagstone path, with a make-shift plastic bin for stumps, a prized willow bat subsidised by a cash-on-delivery newspaper round, and an unrecoverable supply of tennis balls smashed over the boundary terraced walls.

And, as the candle flickered in the dark before dawn, so Captain Stokes strolled out willow in hand for the day’s final session showdown in a Test that would live long beyond his own innings and undoubtedly my own.