So farewell, then, Headingley: by the time I return, if the plans are to be followed, this ground will look very different, which will not be entirely unregretted. Headingley is decidedly unusual among modern grounds in that the players and press are in close cohabitation, so that you thread your way to the lavatories past the doors of the home and away dressing rooms, while players can watch from a variety of vantage points including on a platform right next to the press box. Michael Hussey was sat there on the second day waiting to go in, jumping in and out of his seat as he stretched and ran on the spot: the scrape of his spikes mingled with the gentle pocketa-pocketa of laptop keys. Slow to get started this summer, he was clearly intent on being switched on for his first ball.

For this proximity, journalists pay a price. The roof of the press box is so low as to render the sky invisible, and I’ve watched this game with view partly obscured by a pillar. But there is something weirdly compelling about walking past the figure of Brad Haddin in a plastic chair awaiting his turn to bat, much as a club player might – except perhaps for the absence of a cigarette dangling from his lips. The accessibility of the area has some interesting consequences too. The previous Ashes Test at Headingley, if you recall, was enlivened by a prank perpetrated by one Karl Power, who, attired as an England batsman, hid out in the downstairs lavatory then threaded his way to the centre. Given that England’s numbers three to five in this Test were dismissed by six and survived only 54 of the deliveries they faced in this match, a similar impersonation might have occurred without anyone noticing.

The players won’t be sorry to be separately quartered in future; on the contrary, they’ll welcome the extension of the cordon sanitaire they enjoy elsewhere. But it will be a loss for us. The players are apt to remind us that they are only flesh and blood; it is no bad thing for this to be incidentally and involuntarily evidenced by contact, however fleeting.