For a while in mid-afternoon as the score ticked along, the white shapes moved listlessly about the Old Trafford turf and the men in green helmets punched gloves at some fresh milestone, something odd seemed to happen.
Squint a little and the picture began to dissolve. Baggy-jeaned ghosts shuffled at the edge of the stands. Jangly guitar music seemed to float across the Manchester skyline. And for two and a half hours between lunch and tea on the second day of this fourth Test England went back to the 90s. In Ashes terms that was the decade of sessions from hell, of howlers and shockers, of bursts of defining English ineptitude. Proper Cricket Men will say you can’t win the Ashes in a session – but you can lose them.
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