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Nobody quite said, “Go back to your constituencies, spread the word and know that the day shall be ours”, but it was a close-run thing. Their zeal was like that of the easily converted audiences in the stylish old film about religious evangelism, Elmer Gantry. It was a tad difficult to see the studied Tim Lamb, chief executive of the ECB, in the Burt Lancaster fire-and-brimstone preacher role, but no matter. Hearts were in the right place.Everybody there wanted the game to prosper.

The day’s biggest, perhaps sole, heresy, was committed by Jim Cumbes, chief executive of Lancashire. He said that while he could never propose it, he wished the number of first-class counties could be reduced. And he thought it might be achieved by natural wastage to boot.There are seven parts to the National Strategy, all of them seen to be equally important: primary schools, secondary schools, clubs, regional, district, first-class, England. While 80 per cent of the delegates put clubs as being the most important of those elements ­ small wonder, given all the coaching they now do ­ the England captain, Nasser Hussain, set out his stall for youth.”My abiding memory of the winter was watching kids in Pakistan and Sri Lanka playing in the streets. I want to see nothing more than the youth of England with a bat and ball in their hand, because that is the future,” he said.While the most immediately eye-catching of the strategy’s objectives was to make England the best side in the world by 2007 (winning the Ashes might hurry it up) and to put England Women in the top two (ditto), it was none the less not as revolutionary as what the ECB intends doing in schools.Every primary and secondary school in England will receive the Howzat Package. This is a dual assault on the nation’s schoolchildren aimed not only at helping to coach the game practically and theoretically but also inserting it into normal classroom lessons. Lesson plans for every subject allied to the National Curriculum have been included.For instance, primary school scientists can be encouraged to identify the direction in which forces are acting when batting, bowling or fielding, design and technology pupils can investigate changes in cricket clothing, English students might be asked to write about how a captain would motivate a team.Putting cricket into schools so thoroughly is the brainchild of the department headed by Keith Pont, the ECB’s director of development.

“We have a unique opportunity to inspire each other,” he said “We have to have vision One team, one ECB.” He meant it all, too Maybe he should be in the Burt Lancaster part The National Strategy starts now.. Friday, just after four o’clock, and the message came through that the jury at Hull Crown Court had been sent home for the weekend. In his office at Elland Road, one man could stop regarding every ring of his telephone as a piercing assault on his strained nerves. Until tomorrow, anyway, when the 11 men and women deciding the fate of two of his players continue their deliberations for a fourth day.