Reign stops play for the Queen, who spent much of her 96 years around big sport

‘The Queen did love the horses. She seemed to quite like going to cricket. She met Don Bradman’s Australians at Balmoral and her sister stood very near Keith Miller looking pleased.’ Illustration: Matthew Green

Rain rituals. Sombre men in coats. Waiting in a grey, mannered place while the BBC talks about the Queen. A day of non-cricket at the Oval turned out to be an eerily fitting place to wait out Thursday afternoon.

For much of the time it felt like a pastiche of ceremonial Englishness, the kind of thing John Lennon might have scribbled on a napkin in the back of a London cab and considered turning into a waspish and satirical limerick. Timings and statements and black ties on the news. An obsessive tending of lawns. Queues, flags, beer and measured talk (nice pins, Rodney Hogg said, for an old Sheila). Prince Charles has arrived at Balmoral. Tea will be taken early. And we will now cut to a special announcement.