Australians don’t have rules. They have lines which they occasionally headbutt but do not cross.

Cracking tale that, Bert. Reminds me of the time I ran into (non-literally) Dusty Springfield, who was hitch-hiking on the A557. To this day I have no idea why the late, 1960s/70s soul singer was so keen to visit an industrial Cheshire town, one-time home of the only player to take a hat-trick and score a century in an Ashes test, but she kept asking so I felt obliged.

Bob Willis wanted James Anderson to be Test captain back in 2015.

Yer man Bob Willis pretty much broke all of your England captaincy rues, KC, yet didn’t make to bad a fist of it.

Mind you, born in Sunderland, raised in Surrey and crafted in Warwickshire is not yer quintessential northerner, I suppose. But bowler who could barely bat? For sure.

A Dylan man (neither a Beatles man nor a Joe Cocker man), by all accounts. A b=northerner Bringing It All Back Home, then.

(KC would you kindly provide a glossary for Sam and other youngsters too lazy to Google things?)

Interview on Grandstand after their return from the US:

Q: “We’d like to hear what you thought about (meeting) Mister Clay.” (Cassius Clay, aka Mohammed Ali)

JOHN: “Very tall.”

RINGO: “Oh, he’s a big lad.”

PAUL: “He’s a great laugh, more than anything. He’s a big lad.”

GEORGE: “He’s gonna get Sonny Liston in three.”

JOHN: “…he said.”

RINGO: “So he said.”

PAUL: “That’s what he said. I don’t think he will, though.”

Q: “I hear you were creeping up to Harry Carpenter in the training camp, Paul, and whispering things to him.”

PAUL: “Yeah. Well you see, the only thing was– He asked me who was going to win! And I would have told him out that I thought Liston was gonna win.”

JOHN: (jokingly) “You coward!”

PAUL: (laughs) “I’m a coward! And it was in Clay’s camp, you see, and there was all these big fellas around. I had to whisper, you know.”

JOHN: (starts singing, and Paul joins in) “‘Liston, do you want to know a secret”

We only really know the rules for England captains.

Pakistan aren’t averse to having a bowler-captain. Or maybe it’s just that historically they went through so many captains that eventually they hit bowlers.

I’ve always liked the story about when Lennon was asked whether Ringo was one of the best drummers of the age. Apparently he said, “He’s not even the best drummer in the Beatles.”