So, isn’t it funny how the mother and father of extended formats - Test match cricket, a concept so screwy it is designed to last for up to 30 hours per game - retains the capacity to get right under the English nation’s skin?

This was demonstrated once again on Sunday (July 2), when the least spectacular fragment of play imaginable transformed Lord’s cricket-ground, one-time Olympic venue and genteel cockpit of the British Establishment, into the Colosseum.

It was the final day of the five-day contest, a traditional highlight of the English Social Season, with the home side chasing a stiff but not impossible target to win the second Test against the world champion Australians, England’s arch cricket rivals for well over a century.

England batsman Jonny Bairstow ducks under a ball and heads up the wicket for an end-of-over fist-bump with his captain Ben Stokes, who is also batting.

Instead of merely pouching the ball and trotting off towards the other end ready for the next over, however, Alex Carey, the Australian wicketkeeper, has immediately rolled the ball, bowls-style, towards the wicket, which the ball duly strikes with Bairstow out of his ground.

The umpire has not called "over," so Bairstow is declared out.

It is the softest of soft dismissals. You might liken it to being fined for driving at 31 miles per hour in a 30-mph zone: usually it passes unremarked and does no harm; most people do it from time to time; you feel somehow cheated if you are the one who gets caught. Nonetheless, technically, you are in the wrong and have breached the law.

One would hope that in a friendly match, or even a low-level league game, the fielding captain would withdraw the appeal while warning the batter not to do it again.

But this was the Ashes, a pinnacle of the international game; on the field of play, no quarter is supposed to be asked or given. In that sort of situation, it is imperative that the laws of the game be meticulously, and impartially, applied.

What most interests me now is the consequences that these three or four seconds in the middle of a potentially 150-hour-long series might have.

Cricket - Test cricket in particular - is played to a large extent in the mind. The mental fallout from this unconventional stumping may accordingly be fascinating.

Within minutes, indeed, England appeared to try to exploit the situation.

This came when a microphone picked up the next England batsman, Stuart Broad, a combative and street-smart seam bowler who happens to be the fifth-highest wicket-taker in Test match history, telling Carey the incident was all he would ever be remembered for.

In the end, England fell short at Lord’s, in spite of a century partnership between Broad and Stokes, who channelled his emotions into a monumental 155, and find themselves two-nil down in the series with three to play,

But the cadence of matches is very compressed: the Third Test begins in Leeds on Thursday (July 6).

I would now not be in the least surprised to see England put in a strong performance there, galvanised by Sunday’s incident being so fresh in their minds.

I suffered a similar dismissal once in an obscure league match, long forgotten by everyone else, many years ago.

The conditions were wet, and every ball bowled was indenting the pitch.

When I walked out of my crease to tap down the latest mark, the wicketkeeper stumped me.

It was infuriating, but by the letter of the law, I was out.

What I also remember was the reaction of my team-mates: something like, "OK, if that’s the way you want to play it…." We ended up winning the match with ease.

At Lord’s, Carey’s stumping was not the decisive moment. England effectively lost the game in their first innings when they should better have built on a brilliant start which carried them to 188 for one in now customary rapid time.

But, funnily enough, if it preys on the two teams’ minds, that stumping just might have a big impact on the outcome of the next Test at Headingley.

Quite apart from making England all the more determined, it does not strike me as the action of a team supremely confident in the superiority of its cricketing skills.

The visitors will in any case be without the injured Nathan Lyon, their reliable and vastly experienced spin bowler, for the rest of the series.

And if the hectic schedule is taking its toll on the pacemen, as it surely must be, it ought to be easier for England, as the home team, to draft in fresh replacements.

History teaches that, at two-nil up, the Ashes are as good as Australia’s.

But as the enthralling duel heads to Yorkshire, there are grounds for optimism that the deficit can be halved.