It’s not been a good time for World Cups. The folly (not to mention immorality) of Qatar 2022 has at last been exposed – the decision to move it to November and December doing what corruption and the deaths of thousands of slaves could not. Meanwhile, the decision to cut the 2019 Cricket World Cup to ten teams is being made to look ridiculous by the very teams that will no longer be dining at the top table.

But I don’t really want to write about that. There’s only so many ways of expressing disgust at the way money is trampling all over sport. Instead, I want to go to bed listening to Test Match Special.

I can think of better bedfellows, but, in the absence of Rachel Stevens, the familiar tones of Jonathan Agnew, Geoffrey Boycott and Vic Marks, of Jim Maxwell and Bryan Waddle, make for fine company. This being a World Cup, the cast of TMS is broadened to include some new voices. In my half-sleep state, I was sure Murray from Flight of the Conchords was commentating the other night.

It’s amazing how much of a cricket match can be followed while asleep. I can go to work and hold intelligent conversation with my boss, Nick, about games I have, essentially, slept through. A morning glance at a scorecard is as much confirmation as discovery. Wickets and landmarks often seep in, the accompanying rise in volume cutting through the fog of sleep.

Occasionally, the rise in volume is either so extreme or so prolonged that I wake up. It is a sign of the quality of this World Cup that this has happened fairly regularly. Whether it’s Aggers cackling at the absurdity of the scale of England’s defeat to New Zealand as Brendon McCullum hits six after six, the drama of Afghanistan’s run-chase against Scotland, or Neil Manthorp’s sense of awe as AB de Villiers destroys the West Indies, I have often found myself glad to be awake – hell, glad to be alive – at some very unexpected times.

For that I can only thank the oft-maligned BBC. It is ironic, in an age when profit is the prevailing logic, that one of the things I value the most costs nothing. I would readily pay a radio licence, but there is no such thing. Having said that, there is something to be said for a free point of entry to a sport that, in this country at least, is becoming ever more exclusive, based as it is on whether you have enough money to afford to go to the right school or have the right TV package. Damn, I wasn’t going to write about money. Time to head to bed. It’s England versus Sri Lanka, tonight.