Something strange happened last Thursday. I found myself desperately willing Jade Dernbach to bowl England to victory. Not that strange, you might think, for an English cricket fan to want the England cricket team to win, but let me explain.

The clue is in the wording: “an English cricket fan.” Different to being an England fan. It’s not that I don’t want England to win, but I’m a bigger fan of cricket than I am of the England cricket team. It’s the same with football, which gives the best example of my admittedly slightly perverse attitude. Remember Euro 2000, when England beat Germany? Vaguely, probably, because it was such a dire game, overshadowed by shameless hooliganism, and as such not as memorable as the glorious failures of Italia 90 and Euro 96. Nor was it satisfyingly redemptive, in the way that the 2005 Ashes was.

Let’s face it, England fans – even English cricket fans – would have taken any win over Australia after years of humiliation, but the quality and drama of 2005 made England’s victory all the sweeter. As did the quality of the opposition, which was curiously lacking in the case of Germany in Euro 2000.

Anyway, back to last Thursday and a dead rubber in an inconsequential series of a format I have little time for. So much so that I had forgotten that the match was even being played, only tuning into TMS with four overs to go. So how did I find myself on the edge of my seat, desperate for Dernbach – a player I have little time for – to prevent West Indies scoring the seventeen runs required from the final over?

Maybe it is just another example of the power of cricket to engineer dramatic finishes, and my susceptibility to be absorbed by them, but I think it is more than that. It is still too early to say how England will rebuild from the wreckage of the recent Ashes, but for now it is a return to the England of my youth, Atherton’s England, and the reduction of hopes and expectations is strangely reassuring. Defeat is less hard to swallow; victory all the more treasured.

The following day, news broke that I wasn’t the only one to care disproportionately about the match. Ben Stokes managed to break his wrist, punching a locker after being dismissed first ball, and will now miss the T20 World Cup.