Ben Stokes is cricket’s last action hero – the ODI captaincy can be his Viking funeral

‘Ben Stokes might be the last of something, the last England cricketer anyone will actually recognise in the street, the final cartoon-book England A-lister.’ Illustration: David Lyttleton/The Guardian

This column is about the rise of high-end supermarket cheddar cheese that has delicious and addictive crunchy crystals in it. What are these exactly? And is everything just basically crisps now? This column is about the MCC being needlessly given tens of millions of pounds because the England and Wales Cricket Board sold a hat that isn’t really a hat, just the promise of a brightly coloured future-hat.

This column is about cricket umpires being reduced progressively to a theatre of facial expressions, from the brave, wounded “you’re on screen, please reverse your decision”, to the screw-you triumphalism of the confirmatory finger to an empty set of stumps. Michael Caine once said that while doing a closeup you should always stare at a fixed point, always into one eye not both eyes of your scene partner. Do we need to train Joel Wilson in this?