A crowd of more than 10,000 turned out to enjoy the spectacle, and revelled in the success of their local favourite, Chris Matthews, who - it would not be unfair to suggest - has been tucking into one or two pies since the days he faced England at the WACA in 1986-87. He wobbled to the crease like the Barmy Army in search of the bar, and yet emerged with three well-priced wickets under his sizeable belt - as many as all England’s bowlers picked up between them.

It was a breathless day all round, and not just for the men in the middle. When news filtered out early in the day that Damien Martyn had retired with immediate effect, it triggered the sort of flurry of activity that the pokey little press enclave had not been designed to accommodate. In fact, the area bore more of a resemblance to a cake-stand at a church fete, and so was not ideally designed for such a melee of stressed electronica and dangling cables. “Don’t spill your bloody coffee on my laptop,” fumed one cramped Aussie photographer to the English gentleman of the press sat next to him. “Actually it’s a cup of tea, and I have no intention of doing so,” came the testy retort.

Press conferences galore interrupted the flow of the day, as Ian Chappell, Dennis Lillee and Wayne Clark queued up to reminisce about Martyn’s career, before a wide-eyed Adam Voges was wheeled before the media to explain the bizarre circumstances of his call-up. A PA announcement was the first he knew of the vacancy in the Australian squad, and a tap on the shoulder at deep midwicket was how he learned he was filling it. “I thought I was in trouble,” he said, as Tony Dodemaide led him to the office to receive a phone call from Cricket Australia.

Nothing was quite so unexpected, however, as the goings-on in the corporate hospitality tent at the back of the pavilion. Roughly half the ground had been given over to various sponsors and their thirsty guests, and so at lunch, while the paying punters milled around on the outfield watching Panesar warming up, the rest rolled out to the marquee to fill their troughs. Several thousand boozy guests, armed with bread rolls, then turned on their after-dinner entertainer - a man who was clearly expecting trouble, given that he came dressed in the sort of garb that a baseball umpire might wear.

His crime? He was singing pro-Collingwood songs. Not the cricketer, I hasten to add, but the Aussie Rules Football team, a Melbourne-based team that one spectator informed me “are like Newcastle in England. Everyone hates them.” England’s cricketers were once likened to pie-chuckers by a Western Australian great, Rod Marsh. Western Australia’s cricket fans, it seems, are roll-flingers. And at Lilac Hill, it was the flingers who were the more effective.