There is a belief in some quarters that the greatest danger facing Test cricket comes from young players who set out to become T20 specialists from the outset. A dollar sign in one eyeball and a rupee sign in the other, they spend their time practising reverse scooped maximums, back-of-the-hand slower balls and the shilling of telecommunications products in TV ads.

Whether or not these people exist, that sort of decision concerns me far less than the mundane no-brainers repeatedly faced by young professionals who have always enjoyed cricket in all its many forms.

Consider also what would face a player who took the first-class option upon his return to England: a great slab of first-class cricket shorn of most of the top players in which every run and wicket is qualified by the repeated observation that early-season green pitches aren’t like those on which Test cricket is played.

The upshot is that a lot of promising young England players find themselves specialising without ever quite meaning to.

Test spots do open up – and with increasing regularity as the struggle to find new stalwarts continues – but the team itself can only suffer from having so many promising cricketers diverted away from first-class cricket at almost exactly the moment when they’re ready to take a step up.