Australia have been a great side not just because they were the best but because they were also the toughest. The second of those qualities will now be tested. It will be folly to put them out of even your smallest short-list, for the opposition to assume that the wounds are too deep.

In India, meanwhile, far too many people are agonising over Irfan Pathan and I do not see why. Maybe there is too much space to fill or too much time to consume unless there is something we do not know. The only thing at stake is whether or not Pathan is fit, not whether or not he is good enough. That decision has already been taken. Now he has to be fit, and indeed match fit, before India’s first game which is still three weeks away.

Some fractures heal in that much time. And so I do not know why three selectors have to come to see him play. One of the reasons Pathan is in this side is that we do not have anyone that offers the package he can. If we did, that man would be in the side already.