This is the scene of the entire action, at the side of an unseen pitch. Gradually, the rest of the team appears, to tease each other, reveal themselves and play; knowledge of cricket is not essential. They are a hugely mixed bunch — a rich old rock star, a miserable journalist, a plumber, a black man from the British Council, a gay Hindu, the old man’s grandson, Ruben, a vicar-GP and the team’s newcomer, a fascist telecoms worker called Reg. There are no Muslims; like women, they are conspicuous by their absence, but (unlike women) are well represented on the invisible team.

The players have a mannered and jokey camaraderie; clearly they know each other well and, for all their many differences, have a remarkable, if fragile sense of solidarity — if only for the duration of the game. But the play is, in large part, about the divisions between them and the strains imposed by diversity on English tolerance; even the myth of cricket is no longer powerful enough to bind these men. Nor can the neo-Nazi nastiness of Reg quite unite them against him.

These themes could have been very leaden. But the playwright, Richard Bean, treats them with great wit and humour, as well as with illuminating and moving gravity. He seems to be free of didactic tendencies, and he makes each character an individual, rather than a mouthpiece, as is so often the way in writers such as, say, David Hare. Although there is huge ambiguity about the players’ disputes and moods, it is unclear which side the audience is supposed to take.