Captaining England in what turned out to be his final series as Test captain, Hussain lined up against Smith, his opposite number and 13 years his junior, during South Africa’s tour to England.

“I was at Trent Bridge and I was working for Sky, one of my first gigs actually,” Hussain said. “And some of the Sunday newspaper guys were there and they said: ‘Nas, Nas! Can I have a word with you, you’re the captain’, and they got me into this little room and they said, ‘What about their captain?’, and there was a lad playing for Notts at that stage called Greg Smith.

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“‘Yeah, Greg…Graeme…what’s-his-name, is a very fine leader’ and the next day’s headline was ‘You forgot his name’ and then he got 250 in the first Test match and the headline in the paper was ‘You know his name now, Nas’.

“I might have forgotten his name. Very good player.”

Smith was at his imperious best in the series, stacking up 714 runs in the five Tests at 79.33, including scores of 277 in Birmingham and 259 at Lord’s.

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Rob Key pointed out that Hussain’s missteps when it came to Smith didn’t end there. The skipper had dropped Smith at point in the Lord’s Test, a reprieve that the batsman fully capitalised on, scoring his second successive double hundred of the series.

“Don’t think we have to go through every one of my misdemeanours in this,” Hussain said. “Yeah, I dropped him at Lord’s. I’m sure that will make the footage of this, he was on 7 or 8 and he made another 250-260. Thanks for bringing it up, Rob. You were playing for Kent U19s at that stage when we were doing that!”