At least you knew where you stood. You’d get struck on the mums, bang in front of all three, your bat adrift like space junk in a distant sphere, and you’d be fine. The possibility just didn’t register that the two-or-so feet that the ball still had to travel could conceivably carry on its path towards those barely-there stumps on the horizon.

OK, so the ball would have to be going somewhere. But there? Hitting them? With all those variables, those oceans of doubt, those vast regions of benefit to the batsman…?

For centuries, umpires of the world, at all levels, knew what to do, and do it they bloody well did. Humankind, from Lord’s to the fjords, was not out.

So the game moves on. That’s ‘a good thing’, right? Technology, too, ‘a good thing’. More accurate decisions? Good things. Except that now, the weekends of civilians are habitually ruined from the fallout of technology.

Two summers ago your correspondent was given out lbw three times in a week, which would never have happened before Hawkeye (and post-Hawkeye never should’ve). Three in a week! Triggered. You can have too much of a good thing, after all.