Biggest cheer of the day at Headingley today was for Giles Clarke – or at least, that’s probably how he’ll see it. In fact, the impromptu mid-afternoon roar was for Geoffrey Boycott, who was walking beside him round the Rugby Stand End. Now there’s a conversation to have been the third part of at one’s peril.

Both were on the way to the teatime presentation of caps symbolising Boycott’s and Ian Botham’s induction in the International Cricket Council Hall of Fame. Quite a conversation imaginable there too. ‘Remember the day I ran you out at Christchurch, Boycs? My, how we laughed.’

Neither Boycott nor Botham actually donned their new bonnets, and careful observation in the former’s case showed why: on the hat hand of his rather spiffy boater, Boycott has had his autograph embroidered. That’s Sir Geoffrey: already the foundation member of his own one-man hall of fame.

It was a crowded tea break, for, not two minutes later, proceedings were enlivened by an appearance from Kiss*, who, as any fule kno, continue to be scandalously excluded from the Rock’n'Roll Hall of Fame. Was the ICC about to claim Paul, Gene, Peter and Ace for cricket? Alas, they had merely won the nPower fancy dress award. Twenty-four gold albums, 19 million records sold: what does a band have to do to impress the selectors?

* As I didn’t see the legendary Simmons tongue, it may actually have been four punters dressed as Kiss. If so, my compliments to them: they were very convincing.

It was digeridoo day in the Isle of Wight yesterday, according to one of my erstwhile Yarras teammates, as he surveyed the place in search of a pub with Sky there to watch the cricket. Was this was the reason for Australia’s sudden surge? he asked. Let’s at least add it to the list of possible reasons, because such changes in ascendancy do not always follow common sense reasoning. But it might more be sensible to view the day as the continuation of an Australian improvement since the first innings at Lord’s broken by a single poor day at Edgbaston, against a steadily weakening England, with home observers blind-sided by their obsessive preoccupation with Fred and all his works. Australia finally fielded its optimal formation, and when Strauss played what looked a weary shot the rest crumbled. Bopara, Bell, Collingwood – it’s not May, Cowdrey, Graveney, is it? Hell, it’s not even Hussain, Thorpe, Stewart. Australia didn’t play like the best team in the world, but England played very much like the fifth.

En route this morning, I walked past posters of a fist-pumping Kevin Pietersen, flogging the Ashes. On arrival, I took a leak in loos full of posters of armpit-raising Andrew Flintoff, selling deodorant. The absentee promoters had a message: England started full of fight; yesterday, they stank.