There are few philosopher kings in English cricket and therefore, one assumes, few first-class cricketers who know of Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon. In the light of recent events, though, today’s players may want to acquaint themselves with the great Englishman’s ideas of surveillance, now more than 200 years old, which have telling implications for them.

It was Bentham’s younger brother, Samuel, who provided the inspiration for the Panopticon. Working in a factory in Russia in charge of an unskilled and ill-disciplined workforce, Samuel conceived of placing himself in the middle of the factory floor, arranging his workers around a central desk so that he could keep an eye on everyone. After visiting his brother in the late 1780s, Jeremy realised this system of central surveillance could