When we came into this tournament, a lot of people were saying we lacked the basic interviewing skills to answer a few simple questions without becoming bogged down and making the same old errors of saying: “Er, well, obviously we’ve got to be disappointed with that, er, Nas, er, I mean Wardy.” And it’s true that, in the past, some of our lads have frozen under the lights in these short-format interviews. But I think we can all be very proud of the way we’ve dealt with some often highly-skilled questioners over the last couple of weeks.

Every one of those lads in that dressing room has done a great job, but I’d like to single out Jimmy Anderson. A few years ago, Jimmy would have just stared back at the interviewer with his mouth open, looking like he might cry. But these days, he listens to the question, nods a bit and then he’s straight into the right areas by saying: “Look, I just try to get it into the right areas.”

Broady too – he’s coming on leaps and bounds. He’s a very intelligent cricketer, and he’s not afraid to try different things, running his hand through his hair, slipping in a little joke, dropping the microphone at a key moment. He’s got a massive future ahead of him as a specialist post-match interviewee if he wants it.

Even when we had our difficult times, for instance the Netherlands game when people were asking: “Is this the worst performance by an England team in the history of cricket?” and “Why don’t you just retire now?”, we never let our heads go down. And we bounced right back by saying: “Well obviously it’s disappointing to get beat but there’s a lot of positives to take from defeat by a very well-organised Dutch outfit.” That showed a lot of character, that did.

With hindsight, maybe we didn’t get the balance right by only sending the bowlers out to be interviewed. Would a Robert Key-type have made the difference? Someone with his experience of waiting for the question, rocking back on his heels and chewing thoughtfully for a few minutes before answering? Possibly. But hindsight is a wonderful thing. We probably missed Freddie, as well, he’s the sort of guy who can change the course of an interview in a second with a joke about going to the pub or, these days, a little bit of politics.

On a personal level, it’s not been the greatest tournament for me, interview-wise. It’s not through lack of effort, I can promise you that much, but I have felt a bit one-paced if I’m honest. No matter how hard I try I just can’t seem to come up with anything interesting to say. I’m very happy to hand back over to Straussy in the studio.

Alan Tyers was taking the positives from this interview