Why isn’t Andrew Strauss a celebrity quite on the scale of Mahendra Singh Dhoni though his achievements as captain of the England cricket team are arguably just as great?

It is also unlikely that Strauss, England’s “Mr Cool” and a polished character not given to exaggerated emotion either in defeat or in victory, will make nearly as much money as Dhoni.

Nor can any of the younger England lions — James Anderson, Alastair Cook or Stuart Broad — look forward to the rich rewards they would undoubtedly have received had they been Indian.

In fact, it could be said that being an Indian cricketer today is to get first prize in the lottery of life — “to be born an Englishman is to win first prize in God’s lottery,” Cecil Rhodes, the British founder of Rhodesia, is supposed to have boasted.

“Hat-trick Hero” is how Broad was described in one paper after his three wickets in three balls at Trent Bridge. Cook merited the headline, “He’s hot,” for his batting at Edgbaston. Both these reports were confined to the sports pages.

Although England’s climb to the “top of the world” in Test cricket made the front page, none of the England cricketers has so far been turned into a “celebrity” in the sense that term is understood by tabloid newspapers such as the Daily Mail or The Sun.

After a week of looting and rioting in London, Birmingham, Manchester and other English cities, the point has been made that many of today’s younger generation lack role models whose inspiring examples would have given them a moral sense of right and wrong.

Of all the top cricketers, young Broad certainly has the potential to become a true celebrity. For a start, with his fair hair, he has quintessential English looks. This is a sobering reflection on the state of modern Britain but Broad would find it easier to make the transition to becoming an A-list celebrity — and getting invited on to Celebrity Big Brother — if he behaves badly from time to time.

Strauss is widely admired but the young don’t want necessarily to be like him — Wayne Rooney, the foul-mouthed but hugely talented Manchester United and England footballer is more the kind of person they can identify with. He has a £50m, five-year deal with his club, which is much more than Strauss will ever earn.

Rooney has a number of advantages, apart, that is, from being able to convert half chances into impossible goals. Shares in Rooney shot up when he was caught out going to prostitutes old enough to be his grandmother.

Another gifted footballer, Ashley Cole, has become a celebrity by virtue of cheating repeatedly on his former pop singer wife, Cheryl Cole. As a former member of the Girls Aloud band, she might be a talented singer but what has boosted her profitable solo career is her former husband’s willingness to sleep around. No wonder she has tried more than once to get back with him for nothing sells like controversy.

STEPS TO ‘CELEBACY’

Someone who studies hard at school, passes A-level exams with a string of A stars, gets to a top university and emerges with a First is often dismissed as worthy but a little dull. This is the route preferred by aspirational Indians who — unlike a good proportion of their black or white working class counterparts — see academic achievement as the route to well-paid professional careers.

This probably also explains why among the 4,000 people who have had their mobile phones allegedly hacked by journalists at the now defunct News of the World, there does not appear to be a single Indian or Asian name. This also appears to hold true for the people currently being hauled up in court for looting and public order offences.

During the recent spate of looting, a number of celebrities took to Twitter to denounce the troublemakers. But this is a little ironic considering many impressionable young people have lost their sense of moral bearings precisely because of the behaviour of celebrities.

A whole generation of young women see absolutely no point in making the effort at school. They want to be “glamour models” like Katie Price (also known as Jordan) or, better still, a supermodel like Kate Moss, though she has been photographed sniffing cocaine. Over many years, The Sun’s Page 3, with its daily topless picture, has whetted such ambitions.

In defence of the young looters, it has been said they are no worse than bent bankers who give themselves multi-million pound bonuses or politicians who fiddle their expenses or indeed policemen who accept bribes.

The former Daily Mirror editor, Piers Morgan, who has become a celebrity himself through being a TV presenter, has drawn up a list of Britain’s 100 top celebrities. Despite his determination to leave out “Z-list wannabes scrabbling for their 15 minutes of recognition on increasingly degrading reality-TV shows”, Morgan has included the sort of people he promoted in the Mirror.

Thus, he includes Simon Cowell (1); David Beckham (2); Cheryl Cole (3); Kate Moss (8); Rio Ferdinand (9); Victoria Beckham (15); Wayne Rooney (25); Katie Price (28); Coleen Rooney (wife of Wayne) (67); Naomi Campbell (90); Sienna Miller (95); and Heather Mills (100).

Andrew Strauss, Alastair Cook, James Anderson and Stewart Broad are all absent.

To be sure, the media have got to retain a sense of fun in their coverage of the social scene. It is also a little risky linking bad behaviour by young looters to contemporary celebrity culture. However, in the social churning taking place in Britain, celebrity culture sometimes equates to yob culture.

Celebrity stories can be hilarious, though, none more so than Shane Warne’s transformation, under expert guidance from Liz Hurley, from a rough and ready Aussie into an emasculated, eyebrow plucked metrosexual.