Joe Root takes pleasure in the reverse sweep, as should everyone else | Andy Bull

Even the old sorts can appreciate the sporting artistry of the manoeuvre that Root instigated for England at Edgbaston

The way Mushtaq Mohammad tells the story it all started in a one-day game at Vale Farm in Wembley, Middlesex against Rothmans’ International Cavaliers, on 15 August 1965. You know it must have been a Sunday because the Cavaliers were a hit-and-giggle exhibition team set up by Ted Dexter and Bagenal Harvey to fill the gap in the afternoon TV schedules on the sabbath. They paid Mohammad £10 a game to play, which, like the 209 Middlesex made off their 40 overs, felt a lot more back then than it sounds now.

Fred Titmus was bowling, and Mohammad says he was wondering where, exactly, his next run was going to come from. “So I looked around and realised that the only gap was at third man.”