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Sleepless. Helpless.
These two words were uttered by one of the heroes of England’s 2005 Ashes victory, the Glamorgan fast bowler Simon Jones, who effectively broke his body for good in the course of the campaign and never represented his country - or England - again.
Yet they could sum up the state of mind of most England Test cricketers through the ages - if not those amateurs who tagged along on jolly tours of New Zealand or the West Indies in the 1930s - before Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum seized the reins, and held them less tightly than any of their predecessors.
In full, what Jones said in his autobiography, My Life, was: “Sleepless. Helpless. This is Test cricket. This is what it is; this is what it does.”
Contrast this profoundly anxious state of mind with that of the batsmen in the present England team, especially the youngsters like Harry Brook and Ben Duckett (whereas Zak Crawley has admitted to more self-doubts after being subjected to more intense criticism). If two words alone can sum up the new attitude, they would surely be the opposite of those above.
Relaxed. Empowered.
It is clearly impossible to draw any such conclusion, yet it is conceivable that no modern England batsman has brought a more relaxed frame of mind to the Test arena than Brook - Duckett having had the baggage of his first incarnation, on a tour of Asia, to overcome. Nerves are involved, of course, but always enabling not disabling nerves.
Before the morning anthems, Brook had a giggle with Moeen Ali as they stood next to each other at the end of the England line. The pair shared a few more when they responded to the direness of 73 for three with a partnership of 111 off only 108 balls.
Less than a year ago Brook had never played a Test match. His innings of 85 here has taken him up to an aggregate of 1174 runs at 65, an average that is five points higher than any recorded for England (exceeding that of his fellow Yorkshireman Herbert Sutcliffe), and at a strike-rate of 91 runs per 100 balls, the fastest ever by any specialist batsman of any country.
Here is the fruit of England being the first country to initiate a 20-over tournament, back in 2003. Brook has grown up with short-format batting, and cultivated the ability to score off almost any ball, as his successors will have to do.
Brook, so far, is unique among England players in having grown up in this 20-over environment; or at least, at 24, he is younger than Crawley and Duckett. If a comparison can be made with any predecessor, it has to be Kevin Pietersen: when Brook pulled the first of his two sixes, without much more than a whip of his wrists, he echoed Pietersen - and Brook, being slightly shorter and more flexible than Pietersen, can more readily get under the ball which is little short of a length.
The challenge for Brook in the remnants of this series is to go one step further and, in England’s second innings, produce something of the magnitude of Pietersen’s 158 here in 2005. Brook, in his first Ashes series, has scored 32, 46, 50, 4, 3, 75, 61 and his latest 85. Pietersen, in his debut Test series against Australia or anyone else, also scored his fifties before the culmination - or was it even consummation? - on that final afternoon at the Oval which brought millions to their feet and secured the Ashes for England: 57, 64 not out, 71, 20, 21, 0, 45, 23, 14 and 158.
Expectation weighed more heavily on Pietersen in 2005 - for 16 years England had been losing the Ashes - than it will on Brook in his second innings, when a levelled series is the most England can salvage. Yet it would still gratify England supporters if Brook can kick on to his first Test century in England, and cap a reasonable summer.
For this home hundred to happen, Brook may have to add another trick to his fearless repertoire: not to get giddy once he is middling his gorgeous front-foot drives. He has been known to start quietly - and his forward defensive, the basis of his game, is Boycottesque in being impermeable - before expanding into all of the 20-over shots in his repertoire. But, having expanded, can Brook then drop down a gear or two - perhaps when wickets fall at the other end, or when for some other reason the bowlers get on top - and re-group, then re-launch?
Although he has scored four Test centuries, twice only has a Brook innings lasted for longer than three hours for England - the longest four and a half hours - but batting all day is a frontier which he has to cross if he is to secure his kingdom.
Harry Brook is emulating Pietersen in 2005 – now he just needs a hundred
The 24-year-old personifies the relaxed confidence of England's young batsmen