MARTIN JOHNSON

When the TV cameras panned around the crowd during the third and final ODI at Headingley, they alighted upon a VIP visitor from Barnsley going through his full repertoire of facial tics and twitches.
Even in the middle of a heatwave, Harold Dennis Bird (“Dickie to my friends”) was plugged into his default setting, gazing mostly skywards, and on full alert for a Biblical downpour.
This is not, however, the kind of scene we’ll be seeing a hundred years (or maybe less) than now, when the game moves into the Star Trek era – “it’s an umpir...