England may have failed, just, to scale the heights of 500 in their third ODI against Australia at Trent Bridge but in three years’ time they will have the chance to scale the heights of 600 - when the ICC’s Future Tours Programme sees it fit and sensible to match England in three ODIs against the Netherlands in May 2021.

Cricket is expanding rapidly, from country to country, which is good news. New market research from the ICC claims the sport has more than one billion fans around the world, with 39 per cent women and girls.

What is not so good is the absence of a coherent vision for the game, although the International Cricket Council likes to present its most recent announcement as such.

A 13-team ODI league pairing England’s batting line-up against Dutch part-timers on a pitch in Amstelveen with some very short boundaries is not really sensible. True, an England team under the late Peter Roebuck was beaten in the Netherlands but the organisation of English cricket then was shambolic: the players, far from acclimatising and practising, flew from Heathrow on the morning of the game.

The disparities in the future World Test Championship will not be quite so gross because it will be based on nine teams, ie the current 12 minus Zimbabwe, Ireland and Afghanistan. But does it really provide a context for Test cricket as the ICC likes to say?