The Surfer

His knee, in other words, is shot, its condition chronic. In which case this is no longer about getting Vaughan fit for cricket. It is about trying to make sure that by the time he enters middle age he is not doing so on a stick.

"Why me?" is the sentiment that prevails as you consider a life without cricket, but it is the uncertainty that gets you down.

“Fred was rarely injured and missed Test matches usually only because, in his profoundly English bloody-mindedness, he had been caustically rude to someone in officialdom. His successors, none of whom has yet reached his league, spend more time recuperating from strains and stress fractures than they do engaging the enemy.”

But my spirits needed a quicker lift than waiting for the debut of Tom Hawkins. Thankfully, I found solace in Yani, the T-shirted manager here. "Where you from?" he asked in that Greek way that wants to know. When I told him, he recited the postcodes of all the Melbourne suburbs on the Epping line. "Northcote, 3070. Thornbury, 3071." He had once lived in Brunswick.

It is difficult to believe, however, that any of England's defeats has been so comprehensive and humiliating as the one which left them with a 5-0 series whitewash. The only thing to be said in England's favour was that so few people watched it.

Does he want the job? Pause. A pause, I reckon, is always a bad sign at this juncture. Such is the mental strain that comes with the captaincy - it is a constant companion, and not always a pleasant one - that the potential candidate really has to want the job. Not covet it necessarily, but he should relish the prospect and the challenge. This is the one great advantage Flintoff has right now, that and the fact that if he is captain he can always call upon himself to bowl, an advantage denied to Strauss throughout this series.