If ever a man deserved his gong it’s Sir Chef

Here’s a date for the diary: if you’re in south London on 11 April, head for the Oval. It’s going to be nippy for sure, certainly a four-sweater day, and it might even be snowing, but you can count on the free coffee Surrey generously lays on for members, not forgetting a few pastries as well. More than that, though, you should be able to see a real copper-bottomed English knight of the realm strapping on his pads. With a bit of luck Sir Alastair Cook should have said cheerio to his lambs and be playing in the County Championship for Essex in what must be his gazillionth season of first-class cricket.

If ever a man deserved his gong it’s Sir Chef. And come April and a handful of spectators in a largely deserted Oval, it will be a far cry from that golden September Monday last year when 25,000 cricket fans saluted Cook with an endless roll of standing ovations and tears. I was there and still have the ticket stub. Sad, eh? It was almost better watching it again on the end-of-year TV highlights shows. Only on TV could you really see the full scale of love and admiration for the Chef, a man for whom nobody — apart from Kevin Pietersen — ever had a bad word.

We now have a full XI of chaps knighted for services to cricket, though two of them, a bloke called Frederick Toone and the great Neville Cardus, never played first-class cricket and were knighted for services to the game beyond the boundary. The question of who out of our XI cricketing knights would open the batting can keep you going for days: I’d go for Hobbs and Hutton, with Cook coming in at No.