With the nation gripped by cricket as never before — more so, even, than Botham’s Ashes of 1981 — long-time cricket lovers, and newcomers, have all been asking the same question: “Is cricket the new football?” Their answer has been a resounding “no”. I wish that they were right.

Next week I will be at the Oval for the deciding Test match. Having watched the previous matches on television, I know what to expect: football crowds.

The phrase “it’s just not cricket” is usually taken to refer to fair play. This summer its meaning has changed. The crowds’ behaviour has not been that of cricket lovers but of football fans: chanting, booing, singing and a general determination to tell the opposition that we think they’re scum.

That goes with the grain in football — I join with everyone else when we boo the opposition players at White Hart Lane. And I join in the chants, hoping to antagonise opponents into playing badly. That’s football — 90 minutes of pressure-cooker atmosphere.

But cricket is meant to be different. Cricket fans don’t boo opponents — we applaud them. When a cricketing genius such as Shane Warne is on song, it’s a sight to gladden the heart of any cricket fan, not to be jeered.

Cheer, yes. Scream with joy when an Aussie wicket is taken, certainly. But not incessantly for four or five days. The whole point of cricket is that it is a subtle game, stretched out, with long periods of often unbearable tension.

That tension is made even worse when you can feel the gripped silence of the crowd, as every ball is played out as a drama of its own. And it is correspondingly ruined when the crowd’s chanting and noise is so great that it is impossible to hear yourself think — let alone to hear the sound of bat on ball or ball on pad.

The newly rowdy crowds are a reflection of cricket moving from the fringe to the mainstream. Restrained and thoughtful cricket crowds were once archetypically British. This summer’s crowds still reflect mainstream behaviour. But archetypically British behaviour has changed, as anyone who ventures out in a city centre on a Friday night knows. The nadir of this was when the crowd at Trent Bridge started singing “It’s coming home”, the Euro 96 football anthem. Cricket’s not coming home at all. It’s been invaded — by the Brits.