Opinion | Left Field: Going barmy - Ever-growing band of British cricket fans transforms Ashes

One of the more noteworthy things about this year's Ashes series - along with its general brevity, sublime displays of bowling, woeful batting, individual acts of game-saving heroism and the extent to which the hosts are able to manipulate playing surfaces - has been the febrile atmosphere in the grounds.

Watching the fourth test at Edgbaston was more akin to observing a Second City derby match. The Eric Hollies stand was a picture of carnival, and at times resembled the South Stand on Sevens Saturday. Never was the Hollies in louder voice than on day three with the match all but won and Mitchell Johnson toiling under his own well-worn strain. It seemed mostly good-natured, but it did make me wonder aloud when the game became this way.

In times gone by, you could hear a pin drop among the average British cricket crowd. (Occasionally) sunny grounds would be filled with a pristine silence held by staid gentlemen in Panama hats.

Broken only by the soft rustle of a copy of The Times, the occasional ripple of polite applause, the gentle hiss of a loosened cork, and the tiny thud of a picnic hamper lid, the crack of leather on willow would have been audible at every point of the ground.

Indeed, this is a scene still familiar at a regular county match at Lord's. Those august MCC-owned surroundings are still held up as the bastion of old school cricket and the last garrison against the onslaught of an ever-growing body of British cricket fans, the Barmy Army.

The roots of the Barmy Army stretch back to the 1994-95 Ashes series in Australia when England suffered one of their more incontrovertible whippings on Aussie soil. During the fourth test at the Adelaide Oval, with the urn already safely back in Australia's possession, a small group of spirited Poms trotted out in front of a packed home stand and began singing anti-Australia ditties.