Australia, a land of harsh landscapes, fast cricket pitches, and relentless sun, produces players who are brash, unrelenting, optimistic and bright.
English relations with the IPL have been traumatic on all sides, not least for the players who have tried to combine IPL and England cricket, with a relentless grinding of gears over availability, payments, player priorities.
Opener Mark Stoneman top-scored for Durham with 38 as both sides got going again in four-day cricket after a relentless month of Twenty20.
The squeaky-clean image and cricketing persona of relentless perfectionism mean that he has rarely attracted headlines.
But what does ring true is the extent to which all the internal battles and personality clashes are exacerbated by the relentless year-round grind of the modern cricket calendar.
To win games of cricket out here you have to be absolutely relentless for five days.
Phil, the superior all-round sportsman (Andrew Flintoff once told me that he was a good enough batsman to have played cricket for England), was winning comfortably, but Gary applied relentless verbal pressure, eventually psyching him into losing.
But by the time the whole cricket team's shown up at Hyde Park, it's winter again, endless, relentless Winter.
Test cricket's slow days and peculiar customs are a world away from the slickly relentless machine that is 21 st century football.
