The vehemence of the English response to the Bairstow stumping, and the cold blood of the hypocrisy of Bairstow, Broad and McCullum, and the sheer vulgarity of the MCC, suggest that most of this nonsense has little to do with cricket. 

In his column, Nick Bryant, who is English, said that booing in sport is a confession of self-defeat, and that after the disaster of Brexit, the English nation badly needs a win. 

I agree on both counts.

Well, the lynch mob in the Long Room are just the people who gave England Boris Johnson, Michael Grove, and Jacob Rees-Mogg, and who got into bed with Nigel Farage.  (It would be best to pass over some other disasters in silence.) 

The better people are now courting the mob in the outer in the way they did with Farage and the Red Wall. But it is one thing for the Hottentots to spit bile on the terraces of Manchester United.  It is altogether a different thing for the Tory tribal elders to do so at Lord’s.

Underlying both failings is the born-to-rule sense of entitlement of a caste that now has as much use as Childe Harry and Megan.  Sorry, Boys, but after Mafeking was relieved, there was that sad fiasco at Gallipoli, and we legislated to force the MCC here to accept women as members two generations back, now.  Putting women in the Long Room should be a step toward civility, if not civilisation. 

Curiously, it was the fallen idol of Eton and Oxford who put his finger on the issue in his petulant remarks on leaving number 10.  He said that ‘the herd instinct is powerful, and when the herd moves, it moves.’  Unusually for Boris, he got that right.

Stuart Broad – MBE, if you please – resembles Boris so much.  They somehow think that the world owes them a living because they are so pretty, and they can do so much.  You would think they run the joint. 

But if you wanted to know what public service means, the last person you would ask would be Boris Johnson.  And if you wanted to know what the ‘spirit of cricket’ might mean, the last person you would ask is Stuart Broad.  Since he nicked the ball to first slip, and refused to walk, he has been public enemy number one.  Stuart thinks that’s bonzer.  He is noticed.  He is England’s answer to Scaramouche.  Who needs mere cricket?

The worrying thing is that at least the Stark catch that was denied shows that the laws need attention.  We are not talking about the ‘spiritual’ here.  We are talking about the logic of ball games.  The present rule was designed for letter-of-the-law nit-pickers who live for TV replays – that are killing so much sport.

The worry is that this is a matter for the egg and bacon brigade.  It is curious that we are yet to hear the response that a judge gave to counsel that is I think in the Year Books – at about, say, the end of the fourteenth century.  It was , as I recall, to this effect: ‘Don’t tell us what the laws mean – we made them.’

And they’re on your heads, chaps.

Cricket – MCC – snobbery – bad laws – bad manners.