AS Nasser Hussain and his men grew accustomed to the new guard - tough looking gentlemen with rifles - and forgot the old guard - Mike Atherton, Alec Stewart, Darren Gough, Andrew Caddick and Robert Croft - cataclysmic events occurred at home.
Imagine, if you like, that you awoke one morning to find your newspaper recording that Sachin Tendulkar wanted to leave Mumbai and that he had been seen at the railway station buying a ticket for Chennai.
Would that shock India's cricket world to the core? I guess it might. Similar eruptions are swirling round this country at this moment.
Gough, resting for the part of the winter that contains the Indian Test leg, a gruelling stay of six weeks - some of the British newspapers say it is 42 days, perhaps to make it sound longer - says playing for Yorkshire has become "almost unbearable" and that he wants to leave.
It has caused astonishment, particularly since under the contract system he rarely plays for the county, he has the support of the coach Wayne Clark, and David Byas, the captain who told him home truths too often for Gough to find the dressing room comfortable, has retired. But Gough has moved 150 miles south and that may be the important clue.
Let me make it clear right from the start. I like Goughie. He is the original WYSIWYG: What you see is what you get. Work hard, try your socks off, pleased as Punch if the old inswinging yorker gets through half a dozen times in a match. Gough is ebullient to some, a little bundle of joy to all; never short of a word or three, always pleased to see your face.
Of course that does not please everyone. This week I heard him described by an England and Wales Cricket Board big-wig in terms I might hesitate to use about bin Laden because Gough was announcing his impending farewell while his benefit - worth perhaps half a million pounds sterling - was still bringing in cash.
"Grasping" and "money-mad" were just two of his expressions and that will be the general verdict in Yorkshire where there is an expectation that anyone worthwhile will be born, live and die in the same parish.
In the days when they were champions by right Yorkshire used to export their second rate players. Some, like Brian Bolus, went on to win Test caps; Jim Laker who never played for the county attained immortality with Surrey. But jump without being pushed! It is not what is expected of Yorkshire's heroes who are reckoned by their supporters to be gods simply because they play their cricket at Headingley.
I was brought up among them; I know what they're like. Between 1968, when they won the championship, and the mid-1990s when they threatened to win it again leading to last summer's success, they had wretched years. Yet every time I returned to the land of my education I was told by relatives, by former school pals, by old working colleagues, by one-time team-mates and complete strangers that every member of the Yorkshire side was a Test star. If only the Southern-based, blind and biased selectors knew anything.
The first time I set foot on the Bridgetown Oval in Barbados I heard a local fan tell Michael Holding "no cricketer has proved himself until he has taken wickets in Barbados." That's just how they think in Yorkshire.
On another occasion I stood behind the dressing rooms and heard half a dozen Yorkshiremen tear the team, the captain, the committee, the coach and even the groundsman into a thousand shreds.
Their spokesman was tall and heavily built; Yorkshire-born and bred as they love to say. At one stage he patted a huge stomach and announced in Yorkshire broad vowels that it was "all mine and all paid for"; and he spare none of the incompetents in charge.
As the venom died down he summed up the feeling of the meeting. "Aye, lads," he said, "it's all reet us 'aving a go at t'committee and all t'rest but, as tha knows, there's not a man on earth didn't wish he were born in Yorksheer." Not a dissenting voice, not a question among his listeners; no thought that the inhabitants of Tokyo, Tulsa and Teheran might see a different viewpoint.
So that is why Gough's announcement in his favourite newspaper - because it pays him 100,000 pounds a year - had such a devastating effect even though there had been plenty of hints, bits of gossip and tabloid stories about the possibility.
As I write, a few days later, the rumours are that Gough will leave Yorkshire shortly, sign for Essex - who are now in such a poor way that they will be pleased to have an oven-ready hero - and restart the path to glory that began when Ray Illingworth picked him for England in 1994.
Essex - or whoever - will, if they have any sense, use him in the publicity stakes as Yorkshire did when he returned from Australia in 1995, the star that he had always wanted to be. "I've not done a right lot," he said at the start of that tour, "because I'm still only 24 and I've not been around very long. If I had got a terrific career behind me already I would be a legend."
Some mocked. I simply hoped it was the inner Gough speaking and so it has proved.
He did not say so at the time but he really meant "a legend like Fred Trueman." That shadow lies over every Yorkshireman who bowls quick. Trueman, now 70, is an icon, still so firmly fixed in the public eye and able to deliver such pithy verdicts on his rivals that the words are as memorable as his 307 Test wickets.
Trueman did not like even the simplest comparison. Gough stayed silent for a while but eventually the two began a sniping duel that turned into open warfare.
It does not matter to Trueman, immersed in his belief that few cricketers worth watching have been born since the Second World War, but in Yorkshire Gough has been damaged by the Trueman outbursts.
He has also come off second best in less public battles with the former captain Byas who has retired - surprisingly since he was at 38 still able to bat with the best - to till fields that his family have owned for generations. Gough is also sure of a myth that local reporters and county committeemen have ganged up against him. In other words it is time to go; more sad riddance than good riddance.
Gough's self belief and Yorkshire assertiveness formed a perfect match. He will find it difficult to fit into a team full of men with southern English accents but perhaps this is simply a business deal, with a big cheque dominating Gough's thoughts; and anyway how many times will he play for his new county each summer if he keeps his England place.
Let's wish him well. He plays his cricket as we all wish to see it played; with energy, with commitment, with panache. Yorkshire may feel that his day is done and be content to let a discontented player leave but Gough embodies the new spirit of England who hope he and Caddick will lead their attack at least until the World Cup.
As Gough was preparing for his farewell on the eastern side of the Pennine hills, John Crawley announced that, even though he had two years of his contract to run, he wanted to leave Lancashire, Yorkshire's traditional rivals, on the wetter, western side.
He had been sacked from the captaincy, Bob Simpson had not had his coaching contract renewed, Mike Watkinson had been appointed in Simpson's place. It is understandable that Crawley feels that the days ahead are too difficult to contemplate, particularly as Atherton has dropped out of Lancashire as well as Test cricket.
I hear that Crawley will go to Hampshire, although Nottinghamshire, where his brother Mark played for several years, would have been pleased to sign him; but as Crawley's wife comes from Hampshire that is probably where he will finish his career which, since he is only 30, has some way to run. Both decisions are outward symbols of the changing game. Business, money, sponsorship and trading on one's name - not to mention family ties - have replaced ties to the homeland.
So don't be surprised if you pick up the morning paper and read that Sachin is on his way to Mohali, Jamshedpur or Bangalore. If a Yorkshireman can move south anything can happen.
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