Cricket is probably a bit like jazz or religion – if it gets you when you’re young, you’re probably in for life.

For me, it was seeing the touring West Indies team at Hove in 1980. Botham’s Ashes a year later sealed the deal. Until a couple of weeks ago, when the Ashes were relinquished, over the last few months my first waking thought had generally been: what’s the score in the cricket?

Alas, ‘we’ have been out-played, out-muscled and out-thought by the Aussies. So for now, I’ll console myself with ‘The 12th Man’, Billy Birmingham’s irreverent comedy sketch series born in the early 1980s when Australian cricket was in a less-than-cockahoop state.

Inspired by Channel Nine’s popular and extensive cricket coverage on Australian TV, ‘The 12th Man’ features Birmingham impersonating respected broadcasters (Richie Benaud, Bill Lawry) and then-current players (Javed Miandad, Geoff Lawson, Allan Border, Steve Waugh) alike, ripping the p*ss out of all and the state of Australian cricket in general. But you always feel the love and respect behind the mockery.

A ’12th Man’ tape was briefly passed around my mates at school and had the cache of something really illicit, almost forbidden. Listening back now, it still raises a titter though one wonders how Birmingham got away with some of the more un-PC stuff. But it’s scant consolation for another Ashes mullering by the Aussies…