It dates back to when he was 15, in the nets (indoors and out) at Bradfield College and being coached by the former Hampshire batsman Julian Wood. “He was extremely talented in bowling quick or hitting a long ball,” Wood recalled. “Extremely talented but lazy – or lethargic might be a better word than lazy. The cricket was good but the school didn’t push him that much. He floated in and out of Surrey age-group cricket and it was his mum that pushed him then.

“I used to pepper him in the nets,” Wood said. “I used softer balls than the ones you use on a bowling machine – Bola make them – and he would either take them on or leave them. For him it was fun. There was no pathway for him at that age, he did it just because it was fun. I tried to make him an impact player at number five or six rather than an opening batsman.” Wood does not recall Atkinson making a century at Bradfield, so there was not much precedent before he put his name on the Lord’s honours board.

When Atkinson first faced Sri Lanka’s left-arm spinner Prabath Jayasuriya, Atkinson drove him for his first two sixes – one straight, the other nearer to long-off – as effortlessly as if he had been Root. “I’ve seen him play that shot before,” Wood said. “I’ve seen him do it regularly.” Atkinson’s third six – and it will be so important to accelerate in Australia when the ball, whether first or second, is soft – was pulled over the furthest boundary at deep midwicket off the spinner again.

“He needed to leave school, get into the gym and realise how hard he had to work,” Wood added. And Atkinson has. It was apparent again after Sri Lanka took the second ball and Atkinson had Matthew Potts to nurse through to the close. If there was a shot of day one, it could just as easily have been one of Atkinson’s cover drives, during his eighth-wicket stand with Potts, as one of Root’s.

If we recollect the last Ashes series, the tide was turned England’s way by Woakes and Mark Wood, and by their lower-order batting – or hitting in Wood’s case – as well as their bowling. An ageing attack, if Australia still cling to their big three of Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood, can be worn down in Antipodean heat and dismantled. To this end England are quietly but assiduously assembling their resources.