Like whipping up a tsunami to extinguish a brushfire; becoming a storm chaser because you don’t like blowing out matches; deploying an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile to blast a cockroach; organising a three-day workshop in Monaco to address bellybutton lint; like one overkill simile too many.

If the sending-off system is being introduced at the lower levels of cricket, because it seems sport in the suburbs is indeed becoming more feral, then keep it at the lower levels. A team will suffer immediate consequences and perhaps even impose its own disciplines upon players who are more intent on making problems than runs.

Elite-level cricket and its commentators are still appalled enough at the odd petulant outburst by a fast-bowler to suggest the problem is in hand. The Lillee-Miandad incident – as pastorally trifling as a boundary dispute between two Hebrew shepherds - is still the subject of inordinate outrage.

At cricket’s lower levels, financial penalties cannot, obviously, be used as a deterrent. At the first-class/international level, they can be made stiff enough to hurt. After all, professional cricketers are well-paid, but not like basketballers or professional footballers. Financial penalties can still be felt, as will strongly enforced match penalties, as opposed to the minty-mouthed treatment they gave Faf recently.

Mike Brearley has said cricket is the only sport that doesn’t have a sending-off system. Apart from the fact that this is inaccurate, it’s also irrelevant. Sometimes it’s artificial to transpose one sport’s way of doing things to another sport – which is why no-one’s been hair-brained enough yet to come up with goalposts for batsmen to aim at.  

I’d suggest the game’s administrators concentrate on what matters.