So Jonathan Trott is to make his Test debut at The Oval. More power to him. The good news is that The Oval is perceived as an English stronghold, the bad news that it isn’t a great place to make one’s Test debut. On the last-on, first-off principle, Paul Parker, John Stephenson and Alan Wells failed, and never played again. Australians starting their careers there haven’t prospered much either. Mick Malone, Shaun Young and Dave Gilbert never got another chance against England after being capped here – Malone and Young, in fact, never reappeared in Tests. It seems all too easy, having come in at The Oval almost as an afterthought, to be consigned to a footnote later.

No Ramps? Well, you could see that coming. Yet the reasoning that making runs in Division Two of the County Championship is not a preparation for playing Test cricket is meretricious. How much county cricket of any description prepares one for, apart from playing more county cricket, is not screamingly obvious. And after all, the vast bulk of Ramprakash’s first-class runs have been at the highest possible level in England. What does Surrey’s temporary relegation matter?

Yes, there is a difference between first-class and Test cricket, but that applies everywhere, and arguably less so in England than in some other countries: one is likelier to face a bowler of international quality playing for a county than for a West Indian island or a New Zealand province. Discriminating against Division Two cricketers simply because they are in Division Two smacks of making them prisoners of circumstance. The experience of playing in a poorer team has its advantages: more chance to bat under pressure, more opportunity to bowl long spells, more necessity to really covet victory. It might even be considered a useful preparation for representing England in Test cricket.