It’s not just Kevin Pietersen. England needs a whole team of new heroes

Englishmen used to be deported to Australia as a punishment. Now they get sent back to England as an act of mercy. There was not much of a campaign to ‘free the press box three’ after Australia’s immigration services ordered the eviction of the men from the Sun, Mirror and Daily Mail before the winter’s wretched Ashes tour was over. Having arrived with the players for the warm-up matches and watched as defeat followed humiliating defeat, they were the last men standing when the one-day series got under way. Other papers had kindly brought home their ‘dukes’ after the Test series and sent the ‘butlers’, as cricket reporters call each other, to cover the hit and giggle.

The long-suffering three, though, were only permitted to stay for 90 days, meaning they were released from the burden of covering the final two weeks, as a 5-0 Ashes walloping was followed by a 4-1 defeat in the 50-over games and a 3-0 collapse in the Twenty20s.