Joe Root paints an Ashes masterpiece amid blood and thunder of Bazball

There are no bad shots. Five balls after tea on a febrile, at times slightly hallucinogenic first day of the first Ashes Test Joe Root went down on one knee, shifted his grip, waited, then very gently and carefully reverse-nudged a ball from Scott Boland, Australia’s first-change new ball bowler, over third man for six.

This wasn’t really a ramp or a scoop, more a kind of flourish, the shot of a player seeing every detail in minute, slow-motion detail.

It was just that sort of day. Or at least it was at times, as England batted with thrilling elan on a flat, dry pitch; and at other times with a kind of woozy trapped energy, Test cricket reimagined as a kind of brown acid trip, lines blurring, colours seeming to shift and blend.

For a while the second hour of the opening session came to resemble the middle overs of a mid-1990s ODI. Suddenly there were singles everywhere. Are singles OK? Who exactly is winning here? After lunch, as Nathan Lyon produced a beautifully searching spell, the game became a tight, taut subcontinental-style grind.

Harry Brook batted for half an hour like the biggest boy in the school team. Jonny Bairstow produced a post-tea surge, swatting and clump-driving with that familiar sense of controlled rage. Moeen Ali seemed to have come out to bat in a top hat and tails, and was soon trotting off back to his carriage.

At times it felt like a Test cricket medley, a rapturously received farewell tribute, with a sense too of something being played out and processed. Ben Stokes had walked out to join Root with England at 175 for 4, a massive moment in the English Test Match summer.

Stokes ran at the ball and blocked it. Stokes went for a massive, wristy reverse sweep and missed. Stokes drove wildly, down on