I write this having just watched Australia retain the Ashes. I’d say something tart about Australia, but I’m aware that a Sr Veronica in Perth reads this column. She sent me the sweetest letter ever a year ago and I don’t want to lose her love.

I just want to say this: after Ben Stokes performed his miracle at Headingley in the third Test, he said it would all be forgotten if the Aussies ended up going home with the Ashes. He was right, but also wrong, as I refuse to let that happen in the pages of The Tablet, if nowhere else.

A reminder: England were beaten all ends up and needed to avoid defeat to keep the series alive. Even a draw looked unlikely, but then a win became a remote, and then less remote, possibility as Ben Stokes played an innings for the ages. The shots were outrageous. He hit ordinary sixes, and mad ones, like a sort of backhand shot called a reverse sweep. And something called a ramp shot that entails kind of flicking it back over the wicketkeeper’s head. They don’t tend to go for six, those shots; Stokes’ did. The pick of them was a six off a full toss, which a former test batsman informs me is almost impossible to pull off; but Stokes did.