It’s been fun being an old fashioned cricket enthusiast and watching the under 19s play. I was quite eager to see whether the newer, closer world we live in, with greater emphasis on shorter cricket, would make the next generation more homogeneous. It hasn’t happened.

On the first day young Justin Dill of South Africa effected a brilliant run out from point, then him and Corbin Bosch hit the deck hard from just back of a length and the spinners were at a vastly different point on the evolution ladder from the seamers.

Pakistan played India and you could see that the bowlers were so much readier than the batsmen. Sami Aslam and Imam ulhuq looked good but you just didn’t see the depth there was in the bowling where, apart from the seamers, Karamat Ali the leggie and Zafar Gauhar the left arm spinner were really impressive. I will be surprised if young Gauhar doesn’t play for Pakistan.

And India. Chama Milind looked sharp but the spinners bowled a vast majority of the bowlers. Kuldeep Yadav has a lot of curiosity value, bowls the chinaman and the googly and we will follow his progress with great interest but clearly the batsmen were more exciting as we saw with the Sri Lankans too where Samarawickrama looked very classy.

It seems for the moment that the dna and local culture plays a far bigger role than the influence of being in a global cricket village.