The automatic door at Londis, where I buy a paper every day, is broken – has been for two or three weeks. There’s a hand-written sign: SLIDE DOOR TO OPEN. And yet, almost every day and much to the amusement of Julia, behind the till, I find myself standing there waiting for the door to open automatically.

Cue Alan Partridge: “What a funny story…”

I know, but it got me thinking – and not just how dull and repetitive life can be, or the extent to which technology is making automatons of us all. What really struck me was that it was such a waste of being on autopilot, of being in the zone. Sadly, facing a bowler is not the same as facing a door.

A batsman can talk about muscle memory, a technique grooved through years of practice. He can have a routine, a way of switching off between deliveries, of switching back on. But entry into the zone is not guaranteed. Nor is staying there.

“Don’t think. Feel,” said Bruce Lee in Enter The Dragon, but it’s easier said than done. There’s so much to think about, for a start, and it’s not as if there is no time to think. And what if a batsman is feeling nervous? Or over-confident?

A  batsman can tell himself to relax and trust his instincts – to forget about the last ball, to watch this ball –  but that balance between relaxation and concentration – of living entirely in the moment, in rhythm – is so hard to get right. That’s assuming it can be “got” at all. More often than not, it gets the batsman – just like Londis’ door gets me.

The games within games are what makes cricket so fascinating, and there is none more fascinating than the game played by the batsman with himself. Batting is as much a mastery of one’s self as much as a mastery of technique. When it is said that a batsman knows his game it should not be forgotten that he knows himself. Knows himself well enough to forget about himself. To be in the zone.