Irony Of Candice Trying To Land An Early Ko

At a time when you wonder which will come first – the police making up their minds whether or not to prosecute Ben Stokes or Christmas –there are some things in life which take a mere nanosecond by comparison with Plod finally sorting out his paperwork.

- Martin Johnson

Such as the time it takes for a member of the Warner family to start spouting without engaging the filter system between brain and mouth.

If you had to compile a list of the 1,000 best qualified people to pass judgment on the Stokes affair, then Mrs Candice Warner, of Sydney, New South Wales, would not come close to being on it.

Nonetheless, the wife of the batsman who took an inebriated swing at Joe Root in a Birmingham nightclub was recently invited onto an Australian Sunday morning sports programme, where she denounced Stokes’ behaviour as “disgusting”, and pronounced him unfit to set foot upon the soil of her shy, gentle, and easily offended country.

To anyone who’s been to Australia during an Ashes series, this is an all too familiar example of how their media turns itself into a national cheerleader, whose role is not to make impartial judgments, but to promote their team as a collection of bronzed, superhuman surfies, and the opposition as a bunch of toffee-nosed snobs with a serious aversion to soap and water.