There were plenty of characters in that memorable Ashes series in 2005. Today we have Jimmy Anderson and Ben Stokes. When I was a little lad watching test matches on the telly in the school hols, my favourite thing to do, I watched Barrington, Graveney, Dexter, Cowdrey, Close, Trueman, Statham, Benaud, Sobers, Worrell...Yes, elegant batting (I loved watching Sir Frank's late cuts...), but (isn't it so easy to remember just the sunshiny days...) also longeurs often leading to many a match drawn, and it wasn't always the weather. Far fewer test matches are drawn these days (a checkable fact). Easy enough to pick out a few legends and meld them into some sort of golden age. That, to me, doesn't match reality. That isn't to say that we shouldn't relish our favourite legends. As I said, with cricket I think that, as with football, the skill levels and fitness levels today easily eclipse those of those hazy days of the past. It's all good. Let's enjoy what we've got.

There's an enduring story (apocryphal, who knows?) in Radcliffe around the efforts, in the sixties, to honour that Lancashire lad Brian Statham by naming a street after him on a new housing estate. The eventual winner was Statham Avenue, but not before a councillor, completely ignorant of cricket, had suggested "Brian Close..." :-)