Sometimes at the Oscars, the award for the Best Actor, or Actress, the protagonist, is so blindingly obvious, and has so much build-up and fanfare around it, that the crowning moment becomes an anti-climax. The coronation is over before the event itself. And so it was with Steve Smith, succumbing to his lowest score of the series but with a record almost unheralded overall.

Attention, therefore, turned elsewhere, to the Best Supporting Act, where the field was more mixed, the narrative more subtle and any winner more controversial. This is the award for the connoisseur, the viewer that looks more intently into the meaning, the subtlety behind each role, and calls themselves "knowledgeable" as a result. The pretentious pick, but let’s indulge.

Pat Cummins perhaps, with 29 wickets, a menacing presence throughout. But with Ben Stokes at Headingley, a small scuff to this pristine presence. Jofra Archer, surely? That captivating spell at Lord’s and six clinical, ruthless wickets on day two at the Oval. Yet those slumped shoulders on a grey day in Manchester, there were many ups, but a few downs too. And then Stokes, of course, steals moment of the series by a fair margin. Only he too had his lulls, those losses in Birmingham, in Manchester. Marnus Labuschagne? The apprentice; his day will come, later.