With Channel 4 set to broadcast England’s Test series in India, Wisden Cricket Monthly staff writer James Wallace can’t help but show off his excitement.

It’s 3.55 am, the UK is in the guts of winter and its third Covid lockdown. Snow, rain and mutant strains of the lurgy whirl around outside. You can’t sleep, as per, so you slide into your soft clogs and shuffle through to the lounge. It’s deathly quiet outside, no late-night revellers and still too early for the larks or neon clad flagellants. An eerie hush.

You flick on the Grundig. Maybe you’ll watch a clandestine episode of that series you are watching ‘together’ with your beloved, eking it out in case this damn thing rolls on into spring. Go on, they’ll never rumble you, stick on the subs so as not to be caught in the act. You’ll have to sit through it again and feign shock and laughter in all the right places in a day or so but it’ll be worth it. Anything to see you through till dawn.

The TV whirrs into action. But before you can scroll through your recordings to find your illicit episode and before you’ve hit mute, you hear it…

A crunching, almost dirtily electronic stab of notes that stops you in your tracks. A guttural ‘UhhhhhraaaaAAA!’ into parping horns, the melody kicks in, you are rooted to the spot as it washes over you, waves of horns, more UhhhhhraaaaAAA!’s, the sound of crowds cheering spliced amongst it all and a fair amount of wobbleboard thrown in for good measure. DUH! DUH! It ends.

It can only be 20 seconds long but it’s enough to stir the soul, to tap into a childish sense of innocence, security even. Test cricket back on Channel 4. After 16 years. You settle in on the sofa, wide eyed now. Maybe, just maybe everything will be ok?

***

Or something like that. The deal may not yet be officially inked but all the signs are pointing towards Test cricket making a return to free-to-air television for the first time since the 2005 Ashes. No doubt swayed by the potential of a vast locked down audience tuning in to see England and India go toe-to-toe, they’ll be hoping the four-Test series is somewhere near as engrossing as India’s recent triumph over Australia. Whatever happens on the field it isn’t much of a gamble for the broadcaster to replace its current graveyard-shift schedule for a few weeks, consisting as it does of re-runs of Fifteen to One, Countdown and back-to-back episodes of Mike and Molly. You’d hope Root and Kohli’s men can at least pique the interest of a few early-risers before being shunted onto E4 to make way for Messrs Ray Barone and Dr Frasier Crane. However it plays out, it can only be good for the game to be appear live in front of more, albeit bleary or slightly disinterested eyes.

It does beg the question though, if the deal is done, with only a couple of days to put it all together, who we might see helming the whole thing? Lou Bega will inevitably be dusted off, but who’ll be on the other side of the opening credits? Obviously, for pure nostalgic purposes we’d want to see Mark Nicholas, magnificently bouffed and oozing can’t-quite-believe-his-luck chutzpah down the lens, but he has done a deal with TalkSport which make things problematic. The old boys brigade of Atherton, Benaud, Reeve and co. are either contracted to other broadcasters, languishing somewhat in broadcasting exile or have dearly departed to the great comms box above.

Excitable Whatsapp groups of family and friends buoyed by the news of Test cricket’s terrestrial return were pondering the possible line-up. Maybe, they wondered, Channel 4 will have to dip into their existing ‘talent pool’ in order to get the show on the road. Cue a flurry of texts back and forth; John Snow as head honcho, his silky tie resplendent with a Channel 4 bedecked set of stumps, ably flanked by Krishnan Guru-Murthy, Cathy Newman and a returning Michael Crick as the man on the ground? Grand Designs’ Kevin McCloud can do the pitch report, delivering an overwrought monologue about dry patches and soil moisture levels over a tinkling piano. Kirsty and Phil front a series of lunchtime features to bring a flavour of the locations being used on this tour, merrily flirting their way through ground capacities and the latest Covid protocols at Chennai’s MA Chidambaram Stadium and how Ahmedabad’s gleaming Motera Stadium will make the perfect spot for the day-night third Test. Ali G can be housed in a bright yellow static caravan to deliver ‘Stats from Staines’ and Gogglebox’s Lee and Jenny can host a jargon-busting clinic at lunch, asking all the important questions about reverse-swing and bowlers footmarks.

In reality, it’ll probably be a slow start: they’ll take the feed from India and have a few studio pundits for the lunch and tea intervals. That might be necessary given the time constraints but it would be a shame, especially as Channel 4 were so ground-breaking in their coverage first time around. There are plenty of unknowns then but one thing is for certain: lots of people are about to get a little bit of cricket in their lives. UhhhhhraaaaAAA!