Australians will soon be treated to Indian royalty, the King and the Prince. Inevitably, Virat Kohli will stride out to join Prithvi Shaw one day soon in the Border Gavaskar Trophy and it will herald the culmination of a dynasty that has no doubt been cultivated in a royal household (BCCI) that is by no means perfect, but is nonetheless a palace that knows how to breed blue blood.

Australia's own claims to lineage are slightly more dubious. Mitch Marsh was recently appointed as the new vice-captain, to the astonishment of most local observers who hold on to this quaint but outdated notion that performance actually matters when choosing teams (let alone leaders). In his justification, Court Jester (sorry, chief selector) Trevor Hohns talked about Marsh's lineage as being one of the factors in that decision, an admission that was admirable only in so far as he finally admitted that in Australian cricket, it is no longer a secret why the Marsh brothers find it almost impossible to be dropped, despite under-whelming the selectors for years. It's down to lineage!