Just like that, you look up and Joe Root is 35, stepping up for England again. Only this time, few wanted it like this.
Sport is not meant to be this cyclical, but here we are in 2026 with Root as captain of a frayed England Test team. Four years after calling time on a five-year term, breaking off "a very unhealthy relationship" that had developed between himself and the role, the two are back together.
They say you should never go back, but there is a great deal of need here. Root, selfless to his core, remains the safest pair of hands in a team devoid of figureheads. It's a joke Michael Atherton has rolled out a couple of times this summer, but when England used four different captains across five Test matches in the 1988 summer, they at least had four options. It could have been three in four this season.
None of the above is lost on Root. It can only be taken at face value that he is excited by the prospect of what he yet again referenced, in Thursday's statement from the ECB, as a "difficult" job.
That Root stepped up temporarily when Ben Stokes was essentially suspended for the second Test against New Zealand this summer owed to the awkwardness of giving vice-captain Harry Brook a promotion. Stokes had, after all, fallen foul of a curfew Brook had set in motion with his late-night antics ahead of the winter's Ashes.
Brook's latest overlooking does at least seem rooted in cricketing reasons. Limited-overs captaincy is going well after two impressive white-ball series victories over India, and his own batting against the red ball needs to be honed to something more sustainable than outlandish shots and maddening dismissals.
Yet, Brook as Test captain would have been the neater fit. It would be easy for him to give up the T20 captaincy to lighten his load, keeping his ODI focus towards next year's World Cup. The extra responsibility might have unlocked a mature edge. Crucially, it would have allowed Root to keep doing what he does best - bat.
During the highs and lows of Stokes and Brendon McCullum's time in charge, Root has been a peerless constant with comfortably the most runs at an average of 54.16, with 16 centuries among 30 fifty-plus scores.
That form since the start of the 2022 summer includes home and away series against Australia and India. And yet, after finally breaking his century duck in Australia, it may be his sense of duty that ends up tanking those numbers and, in turn, harming a group already too reliant on him. The cold, hard numbers show Root's average as captain during his last full-time stint - including a 2021 littered with six centuries - was almost seven runs below an average of 53.34 without the armband. This team, as it was with Root's previous ones, are not good enough to cover that drop-off.
There is no doubt Root has benefitted from greater liberation to focus solely on his own game. It was clear during the Australian winter that Root checked out from the broader malaise. His obligation to the team was to score runs and, if his team-mates wanted, they could take cues from his work out in the middle and in training to gauge what it takes to be the best of the best in the harshest environment. It was not his fault that so few followed that lead.
It was also apparent to those around Root at The Oval for the second New Zealand Test that the extra responsibility, even siloed for that match, brought back some past nuisances. The media duties, the broadened focus and, of course, having to be the one to front up amid the most absurd fortnight in English cricket's recent history.
Though Root was hamstrung by an inexperienced side - five of the XI had just two caps between them - familiar tactical failings came to the fore. The worst bits of that run of one win in 17 into his resignation in April 2022 reared their heads, notably on the morning of day two when his questionable tactics allowed New Zealand to put on a match-turning 100 runs for their final three wickets inside 20 overs.
Defeat in that Test gave Root an even 27 wins and 27 defeats from the 65 Tests he has led in. But it was instructive that he came into the match admitting to jealously at Stokes having had McCullum to lean on throughout his tenure.
If it read as a dig against Trevor Bayliss and Chris Silverwood, well, it was. Neither were particularly forthcoming on the tactical front in the way McCullum had been with Stokes and continues to be as white-ball coach with Brook.
Root clearly craved that guidance in the way Eoin Morgan, his limited-overs equal, did not. And this, crucially, is where Stephen Fleming can make a difference.
Fleming was a brilliant New Zealand captain, a strategist consistently binding together a team that punched above their weight. He and McCullum - team-mates, close friends and business partners - are not all that different, though those who have played under Fleming speak of a coach able to gauge a variety of match and dressing-room situations and act - and react - accordingly.
Most of those experiences have been at Chennai Super Kings, where Fleming oversaw five IPL titles. MS Dhoni called the shots at Chepauk, but Fleming excelled at spinning the various plates of franchise cricket. That included keeping standards high and being able to disseminate and distribute data from analysts in consumable ways. Even, occasionally, to Dhoni.
With McCullum having taken on a role more akin to a football manager this summer, the space is there for Fleming to come in and have a bigger say on batting and bowling plans and field settings. The same level of detail that has worked wonders for Australia head coach Andrew McDonald.
Root will certainly be glad for hands-on guidance. Hopefully, he will be better for it.
That really is the long and short of Root's re-emergence as England's Test captain. Hope.
Hope that it goes well this time, for team and man. Hope because there is now even more at stake beyond the next Ashes, which ECB chief executive Richard Gould and managing director Rob Key see as the biggest priority in England's immediate future. Root, the most stable, the most reliable, the modern walking great, depends on this working out.
He is the only world-class cricketer left in that dressing room, gunning for Sachin Tendulkar's record for Test runs for a higher plane of legend. Leadership now saddles on his shoulders alongside the burden of being the last totem of this era of English Test cricket after Stokes bid farewell last month.
A country whose undying love of the oldest format is often channelled through those that bring them the most joy in their lifetime now only has one vessel left. And the fear is now it will be broken sooner than it needed to be.
The upside of Root's appointment is he puts team-mates and fans at ease. The downside is we may end up where we were before, with Root at the helm of a beleaguered side and pushed to the brink once more. Only this time, for good.