So, how did you get on with the plastic pitch? Any niggles? Any problems changing direction at pace? I had a little panic about 35 minutes in when I turned quickly in my chair to pick up my mug and thought I felt something go in my knee. But it was nothing much and I was able to flex it off well before half-time. Apart from that, it was like watching football on any other pitch for me. It’s hard to know what all the fuss was about.

Nevertheless, questions about the surface dominated the build-up, to the exclusion of pretty much everything else apart from the state of John Terry’s troublesome knee. And even with that there was the suggestion that the pitch might have played a part.

It was matters such as these, surely, for which high-definition television was invented. The unforgiving clarity of its gaze would have told us directly what kind of plastic we were dealing with in Moscow. Was it the soft, yielding material found on drinking straws or the vicious stuff used to bubble-wrap children’s toys? Or was it simply a green tarpaulin, held in place at the edges by tent pegs?

Unfortunately, our Russian hosts weren’t in a position to offer an HD feed, any more than they were in a position to offer a grass pitch. Sky was lucky, though: at least its commentary team found something to plug its microphones in to, unlike the BBC Radio 5 Live team, who, after an administrative slip-up, were reduced to commentating via their mobile phones. So small and tinny were the results that Alan Green sounded as though he was speaking from a position astride Sputnik. Now there’s a thought.

Expert View

Like most bullies, England are not so brave when the battle is beyond home turf

Martin Samuel

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BACKGROUND

• England's hopes take a dive

• Four minutes of madness cost England dear

• Vultures circle over McClaren’s regime

• Failure to learn from mistakes of Euro 2004

BACKGROUND

• How England rated

• Praying for good news from Holy Land

• Rolling out green carpet proves immaterial

• Russia reaps rewards of Abramovich’s affections

Anyway, in the absence of detailed pictures of the plastic, we were left to fall back on our worst fears – the terrifying prospect had been raised of balls bouncing randomly and to a height of anything up to 110 feet. We had come to be concerned that underprepared English knees would find the surface heavy going and swell to the size of water melons within 20 minutes of the match kicking off. We were worried that Paul Robinson would become confused by a back-pass and slice the ball into his net – although, of course, we worry about that on any surface, in any country.

And so the worrying continued, right up to kick-off time, courtesy of Sky’s punditry panel, which was the rich mix of natural and synthetic fibres that has been making people’s hair stand on end since time immemorial. “I think it’s an absolute disgrace that we have to play on this pitch,” Jamie Redknapp said. “It’s not a good surface – it’s not grass.”

Glenn Hoddle said: “It’s not plastic. It’s a decent AstroTurf, one of the best you can get. But it’s not as true as grass.”

Wearing (unusually for Hoddle) a poorly coordinated scarf-and-tie combo, the former England coach also had plastic-related reservations about Joleon Lescott, the left back making his first international start. “I had him at Wolves. When we trained on the AstroTurf in the winter, he never wanted to train on it. Physically he didn’t feel good on it.”

Blimey. It was becoming almost impossible to cling to the solitary optimistic outlook on this situation that one had managed to come up with – namely, the more something resembled a credit card, surely the better the present generation of England players would be likely to feel at home using it.

Anyway, a fat lot the pitch had to do with anything, in the end. Before long, England were in control, Wayne Rooney was lashing the ball in and David Platt, the co-commentator, was demonstrating that, when using the expression “the full volley”, it is acceptable for the word “volley” to be silent, hence: “He’s just caught that so sweet on the full.” Happy days.

It was the perfect complement to the broadcast’s unashamedly grand and portentous opening, wherein, after some stirring preliminary images of Moscow (black and white, naturally), Richard Keys appeared in a kind of hollowed-out hutch high in the stadium and announced: “Russia is reborn. There’s a new confidence about the biggest country in the world.”

Wouldn’t you have loved to have heard Sky Sports’ No 1 football presenter talk some more about post-Communist optimism in the former USSR? And with Michael Palin talking about retirement, a space may be opening up for a thoughtful travel writer with an engaging on-screen personality. But unfortunately Keys had to move on to the football, so there just wasn’t time. Of course, everything changed with the entry of Roman Pavlyuchenko – or as Platt, risking nothing, tended to call him, “this guy”.

Hoddle said: “I don’t think the pitch was a factor. The pitch was OK.” Now you tell us. By then we had seen shots of defeated England players lying ruefully on the surface. One genuinely nasty thing about AstroTurf: no matter how badly you want it to, it rarely opens up and swallows you. Not the good-quality stuff, anyway.