The usual digs about mental toughness will carry no weight this time because the pressure Stokes was under in that Ashes test at Headlingley and the World Cup Final makes that sound daft. He’s been subdued this season after losing his father in the winter and he dropped a very easy catch by his standards in his last Hundred game which led to him getting a lot of stick from the crowd.

I’ve been watching a lot of the old Big Match programmes from the 70s and 80s lately and they really are an eye opener when you compare, say, how a player from the away side is treated when they go over to take a corner. Forty years ago, players had to face the odd comment from the opposing fans when were preparing to take a corner, but it was often good natured. These days however, they get dog’s abuse and genuine hate from what seems about half of those close by them - it seems we’ve changed a lot since the 70s and 80s and yet the expectation is that players should carry on as they always did.

Jonathan Agnew was interviewed this morning about Stokes and said he expects more withdrawals ahead from the Ashes tour in the winter - in fact, he thought there was a chance it will be cancelled. When you think what men and women are going through at the moment just to compete in their chosen sports and combine it with the inevitable reappraisals that are going on and will go on in response to the Pandemic, I don’t think it is surprising at all that what seems to be a growing number of sportsmen and women are asking whether they want to go through all of that while being separated from their family - England’s cricketers in Australia will get something similar to those away players taking a corner I was talking about as well.

A media which builds hypes up sn event one weekend and then forgets about it within a day as they move on to the next “most important” encounter to be played in a weeks time and a fan base that labels a mid table League Two game in September as “huge” all plays a part in putting the modern day game player under intense pressure - no wonder some are saying “I’ve had enough of this”.