Another day, another pre-Christmas autobiography by a gnarly old Australian cricketer. Brad Hogg’s The Wrong ‘Un surely warrants a mention though, if only for the anecdote about when Steve Waugh tricked him into thinking that some vitamin C pills needed to be inserted into his outbox.

The story itself has pretty much just been told in the previous sentence. “I felt uncomfortable for a few days, but I never got a cold,” he adds.

However, the background to this is extraordinary.

Firstly, Hogg apparently arrived for that debut tour with a seriously chafed groin after spending an hour on a mechanical nightclub bull before departure.

An hour. Presumably that’s cumulative rather than in one sitting, but still – that seems a hell of a long time, even before we ask how he came to conclude that would be ideal preparation for his first overseas international cricket.

Hogg also says that he was unnerved by room-mate Michael Bevan literally sleeping with his eyes open. As far as we can tell, that terrifying freakishness is something that’s pretty much just mentioned in passing.