On Saturday morning at 10.54, the Oval felt like the quietest place in London.
This was quite an achievement, since roughly 25,000 were in attendance.
And yet there they were, silence personified, the peace broken only by the clanking of machinery outside the ground and a passing plane above it.
The minute's silence, then, was precisely that.
It was not a minute's applause, which has come into fashion, as if spectators can't trust themselves to keep schtum for 60 seconds, or at least don't regard silence as sufficiently demonstrative.
It was proper pin-drop stuff, the ultimate sign of respect in a society where he or she who shouts loudest often shouts last.