I know more about science than either football or cricket. For my dad it’s the other way round. This means that our conversations about sport often lapse into arguments in which he’ll say something like, “Tom Finney would be a class above if he were playing today.” And I’ll say something like, “Do you know how much the cardiovascular fitness alone of the average footballer has increased since Preston North End was a serious football team?” [Coming from a Villa supporter, that’s a deadly put-down, I can tell you.]

This is all a prelude to my linking to another fabulously anoraky post by Chris Dillow that scientifically confirms one of my father’s cherished grumbles about the England cricket selectors: that they are biased towards cricketers playing for Home Counties clubs. (Of course, these days, now Test players are employed as such, my dad’s grumble is that Lancashire are chronically deprived of their best.)

It’s only a matter of time before Norm retires to his metaphorical shed with a few years of Wisden and responds to Chris by showing that the apparent geographical bias of the selectors is in fact class based.