The critics are rounding on England’s batsmen for a lack of concentration. I would join in, except that my focus was not up to much either during the rigours of that second Test. It happens. Come the fifth day, I was giving a pretty distracted account of myself.

For a start I was distracted by that advertisement for male hair replacement featuring Shane Warne and Graham Gooch. Who knew that ads as wooden as this were still made? Every time the Australians gathered to pat Warne on the head in congratulation, you wondered whether it was part of the same campaign. You’d say this for Warne’s thatch, though. If it can take a whole day of ruffling from a wicketkeeper’s gloves, it must be pretty well stuck down.

Then there were the seagulls. Where had they come from? What did they want? Ian Healy observed that the ground was “a safe haven for them to have a kip”, which was another way of saying that the run-rate was slow. It was interesting how cleverly the gulls obscured the 3-Mobile advertisement tattooed on the grass. Maybe they were special, viral seagulls, deployed by a rival network provider.

Plus, I was distracted by sunbathing Australian cricket fans. Why do so many of them resemble Peter Stringfellow? Meanwhile, England were going 2-0 down in the series. Clearly it’s a bit early for surrender, distracted or otherwise. Three Tests remain, after all. But realism, too, is a duty, which is why cricket supporters had probably better admit to themselves that their brightest hopes for a glorious winter officially boil down to the chances of Mark Ramprakash on Strictly Come Dancing.

The Surrey batsman’s routines up to now have been the equivalent of the 551 that England laid down in the first innings in Adelaide. Moreover, all respect to Ramps for staying at the wicket and amassing a hugely creditable total, not on the sort of flat-as-a-pancake track that was prepared for the second Test, but rather on a lively BBC surface — polished, you might even call it — on which people have been managing to get it not just to turn, but also to hop, twist and even waltz.

Watching Ramps cope with the kinds of delivery that have been flung at him in recent weeks (and anyone who thinks that the paso doble isn’t a full toss to the snot-box hasn’t been watching their dancing anywhere near closely enough), it has occurred to many of us that we are witnessing the most talented celebrity dancer of his generation.

Some may say that accolade still belongs to Darren Gough, who took the Strictly Come Dancing honours last time out. But remember that Gough was not performing against the intense and unforgiving background of an Ashes winter. What’s more, it didn’t come easily to the Essex man. He had to work for everything he gained on that dance floor. Ramprakash, on the other hand, is a natural mover. He is the Brian Lara to Gough’s Geoffrey Boycott.

Speaking this week on the nightly update show, Strictly Come Dancing: It Takes Two, Ramps mentioned the state of self-transcendence that is known only to the true greats, saying: “There are times when my body doesn’t seem to belong to me.”

That said, Matthew Hoggard, too, one hazards, will have known a bit about this kind of thing, directly after Warne got him with that fifth-day googly.

The fear is, inevitably, that having constructed a platform for success, Ramprakash will blow it all away by throwing a wobbly. True, throwing a wobbly can sometimes look good in a dance setting, particularly in some of the Latin disciplines, and as long as everyone thinks it’s an intentional part of the routine. But it loses all credibility the moment anyone realises that it’s actually a nervous meltdown of a type unique to England cricketers.

There were worrying signs in last weekend’s round that the pressure of being ahead might have begun to tell on Ramps, England-style. An all-or-nothing, bare-knuckle samba would eventually redeem him in the public’s eye, but only after he turned in a foxtrot so far below his standards that the judges could only declare themselves “bitterly disappointed”, while deeply lamenting the way in which he “lost his neck” during the routine.

This is different, one understands, from losing your head. But it’s more than likely that where the neck goes, the head will follow.

Staying with this theme, Ramps has appeared on BBC news bulletins since then, offering his analysis of events in Adelaide and pointing out that cricket is a game played “in the head”. The same goes for pro-celebrity ballroom dancing, though. It’s a mental game. It may even, in the final analysis, be more mental than cricket, especially when you factor in the costumes.

So the big question becomes, does Ramprakash have enough up top? Not in the Warne sense, but mentally. Let’s hope so because, with the Ashes no longer a plausible distraction, the nation turns to Ramps to provide a repository for its fast-wilting pride. No pressure, though.