On the question of Ben Stokes and his availability for the Ashes, the show of hands in front of me — roughly an equal split, yes and no — was a neat reflection on the thorny difficulty of the issue at hand. The venue was the writing room at Lord’s and the small dinner a week or so before the England team was to depart for Australia was to raise money for Chance to Shine, the charity that aims to take cricket into state schools.

Then a headmaster from an inner London school, precisely the type of school Chance to Shine wants to embrace, moved to speak in a quiet but emphatic manner: his pupils know Stokes and look up to him. So he agreed