These are incredibly exciting times to be at Durham with all the young local lads we’ve got coming through. When you look at lads like Togga, Tegga, Stegga, Superkings, Wor Jackie, Wor Billy, Wor Terry, Wor Auberon Waugh and the Duke of Northumberland you know the future of the club is in great hands.

I see my role as being to pass on what I’ve learned: how to adapt to different conditions – maybe an away dressing room that doesn’t have a DVD player for your Lovejoy boxset; how to smuggle a crate of Newcastle Brown Ale through customs at Faisalabad; how to chuck your phone away and hide in the attic when you reckon the England selectors might be calling to give you the nod.

Obviously the big downside of cricket is travel: even playing at Chester-le-Street you can still be away from your loved ones for hours at a time. Fortunately, the club have been brilliant to us and agreed to move The Riverside to Ashington so I don’t get so homesick on those long trips down the A19.

Money-wise, I’ve heard former England players will now be able to charge more than overseas players because foreigners won’t be able to get into counties as easy. Well, after all my years of suffering abroad, it’s nice to see the boot finally on the other foot. Maybe there is something in what Freddie says about the migration problem after all.

As for England, well, there have been good times – writing a swear on Freddie’s head when he was out of it, Freddie filling the team bath with sambuca, Freddie putting Ian Bell in the team bath with the sambuca in it, discovering that Belly couldn’t swim – great days. And not so great days, too, of course – when they made us play cricket.

But that’s all behind us now, my body couldn’t take the prospect of playing in Australia at the end of next year, which is why I’ve signed this four-year contract to play cricket at Durham. They definitely can’t make me go back to Brisbane now. I’ll go feral if I have to, they’ll never find us up on these moors.

By Alan Tyers