There were some dreamy-looking images of Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum, England’s inner circle, the bro-tocracy, during the South Africa Test series. At Old Trafford there was the balcony tableau after Stokes’s hundred, coach and captain bathed in August sunshine, a collage of shades, beards, guns, tattoo-sleeves, giving off an alpha energy so powerful it may have been responsible for fusing part of the pavilion circuit.
At the Oval there were shots of the pair of them lounging together on the turf Baz-Head Revisited-style, Sebastian and Charles in Cinch-branded lycra tracksuits.
