Peer through the window of the local curry house this Friday night and you will witness first-hand the debilitating impact of a luxury of choice.
Watch conversations stall as couples thumb through a catalogue of dishes with experimental intrigue, trying to tell their tikkas from their tandooris.
Watch the brave flirt with the vindaloo and its ominous three chillies. And at the end of this ritual, watch most tables summon the same choices as each and every week.
Perhaps had Ben Stokes got his wish of eight fit quicks to rotate through these Ashes, a fresh combination of seaming flavours to unleash on Australia at every turn, he would have found himself in a similar predicament, the likelihood always that unless things soured dramatically, two or three would go through five Tests uncalled.
There again, for all the lament of his plan being scuppered by injuries, the England captain arrived at Edgbaston on Tuesdaymorning just one option shy of his target and with all the dependable favourites still on the menu.
Accepting that Jofra Archer was never on track to play in the series opener, which begins in Birmingham on Friday, and only ever an outside chance to feature at all, Mark Wood, James Anderson, Stuart Broad and Ollie Robinson are the four bowlers Stokes would probably have shaken hands on having available this week even had it meant the rest of his string going down.
As it is, he has Matthew Potts and Chris Woakes, as well as recent debutant Josh Tongue, in contention, too.
For the First Test, however, England’s attack is set to include all or, more likely, all but one of the aforementioned quartet, depending on Stokes’s own fitness to bowl and how he and Brendon McCullum balance their side.
The selection is not a perfect one, namely because three of that leading four are, to labour the metaphor, somewhat undercooked.
Anderson and Robinson sat out the sole warm-up against Ireland having suffered minor injuries in county action and have not played for a month. Wood, meanwhile, has no red-ball cricket under his belt since the tour to Pakistan before Christmas and none in any for-mat since mid-April, having left the IPL early to be home for the birth of his second child.
All three are fit and available for selection and would ordinarily make up England’s most potent, well-balanced seam attack.
There remains inherent risk, though faintly-inked question marks, and the memory of Edgbaston four years ago, when Anderson bowled just four overs before being sniped by a calf problem, stands as recent deterrent.
That brings Broad into the picture, the 36-year-old having promised no repeat of his Big Brother diary room outburst at the Ageas Bowl if left out, but doubtless chomping at the bit having taken a first innings five-for against the Irish at Lord’s and then seen David Warner’s struggles amplified by India.
There was a feeling that Warner was let off the hook at the start of the last Ashes, the opener making 94 in the first dig at the Gabba against an attack sans Broad, who had snared his nemesis seven times in 10 knocks on English soil in 2019. With the 36-year-old clinging to his place at the top of the order, it would be a bold mistake to chance making twice.
Broad’s omission in Brisbane was partly fuelled by England’s lust for forward-planning, both he and Anderson kept fresh for the pink-ball Test in Adelaide, by which point the tourists were already chasing their tails. That misguided obsession with future-gazing must be as much of a lesson as Australia’s shrewd rotation of their quicks through a similarly condensed series in 2019.
Wood, a delicate beast as the sole surviving genuine quick, may be the exception in terms of being worth a pre-charted course: if the hope is to get three Tests from the 33-year-old then starting now and spreading them across the broadest window seems the obvious play.
Only twice this century has the Urn still be on the line heading into a fifth-Test decider. If that is the case by the time we get to The Oval, talk of red zones and workload management will go out of the window.
