As Joe Root and Ben Stokes punched and clipped their way towards a recuperative century stand on a heavy, woozy afternoon at Lord’s it was, as ever, easy to forget the presence of pretty much anything else beyond those high Victorian garden walls. There were gurgles of pleasure around the basking bleachers; a parade of triumphantly bared male lower-leg beneath pleated chino shorts in the garden behind the pavilion; and everywhere the standard, quietly fevered consumption of jugs, pints and flutes.
It was, though, simply a prelude to the main action, a genuinely startling innings from Root that decorated the opening day of the Test summer with an effortless, assertive grace and provided the opening act of his captaincy with a suitably storybook centrepiece.
Related: Joe Root’s unbeaten 184 puts England on track after South Africa make inroads
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