After a dream start to his international career, Brook has hit his first stumbling block. Essential to England’s Ashes resurgence after his winter of Test glory, with a T20 World Cup winner’s medal around his neck aged 23, he finds himself on the outside for the first time in almost a year.

It’s a mark of Brook’s talent that, despite having played only three ODIs, many met the news he would not be in England’s preliminary 15-man squad with open-mouthed disbelief. Even more so considering two out of those three ODI innings amounted to 0 and 6.

As always, he passes the eye test. The swagger when he walks to the crease and the audacity with which he plays negate any caveats of previous experience.

But experience is what England have clung to, for the most part, in their World Cup selections – particularly in their batting order. All of the expected top five were part of the 2019 cohort. Of the batters expected to bat higher than six, Dawid Malan is the only one who wasn’t part of the team four years ago.

Having played in the T20 World Cup and been picked for the Test matches in Pakistan, he didn’t feature in the ODI series in Australia in the middle. Malan made a poignant hundred in the first game.

Branded rightfully as an all-format player, despite having only played two out of the three internationally by this January, Brook finally made his ODI debut in South Africa, in a series shoved into the schedule before the Tests in New Zealand. Forget the two single-digit scores, the 80 in his second innings was of as higher calibre as Brook had already produced in T20s and Tests. All-format player confirmed.

But his centrality to the Test side meant he then didn’t play the next round of ODIs in Bangladesh – in which Malan made another century – and his omission from England’s World Cup squad means he won’t be given the opportunity to reaffirm his credentials against New Zealand before the competition.

Looking back, his absence from the home India and South Africa series last summer was crucial, as was Malan taking his chances to make as strong a case for World Cup selection as he could. Brook has the star power, but Malan has the stats. And Stokes’ unretirement was the nail in the coffin.

England have selected on the basis of what their World Cup players have done, rather than what Brook is capable of.