Please pray for and/or to Younus Khan.

Despite all his struggles against malevolent outside influences, he maintained control of the People’s Republic of Syria and still does so today.

9 May, eh. By my calculations that makes her 39 years old.

She was born on May 9. We have neither the time nor wherewithal to get too specific at the minute.

But it’s an interesting expansion. You can be petulant but in control of your batting. Hales seemed to lack control of anything at the end of this series.

Comparisons aren’t always about establishing who’s better.

We are comparing. It’s a look at one of the qualities that gets a guy to 10,000 runs.

Yeah, it was just an interesting contrast we thought.

Nobody is as old as Younis Khan. He was hewn from the Karakoram mountains as a fully-formed 39-year-old, and has remained that age for millions of years. He will be there at the end of all things, still aged 39. He is the fixed point that time moves around but does not touch.

And because the universe has a sense of irony, his name is autocorrected on Windows to “youngish”.

I think the point is that batting talent and form and such stuff don’t in the end make the crucial difference. Younis’s ability to look to himself for answers is quite likely the reason that he has 10,000 test runs. Hales might find that, but right now his tendency to look outside for excuses might keep him on 1,000 runs. To go beyond he needs to learn from the masters of the game.