There are people – in the backblocks of the Appalachians, the more profound recesses of France and maybe a few elsewhere too – who cannot understand the appeal of a game that lasts five days and even then may end in a draw.

They should have been in Cardiff on Thursday. On the second afternoon of the first Ashes Test, there was an hour of magnificent individual confrontation: cricket as blood sport. On the one hand, spearhead, Andrew Flintoff. On the other, Phillip Hughes of Australia, aged just 20 and the most exciting batting prospect in world cricket. England know that if they cannot curb this youth’s unorthodox genius they have no chance of regaining the Ashes.