Channel 4’s broadcast was reminiscent of the way the BBC used to do it but that didn’t matter – the cricket spoke for itself
‘Ladies and Gentlemen, this is …” Test cricket, finally back on free-to-air TV at the godawful hour of one, two, 3.35 in the morning. For 15 years, four months, and 22 days now the game has been going back-and-forth about whether or not people ought to be able to watch it live on terrestrial television, and here it was at last – for the first time since the end of the 2005 Ashes. Sky, which has held the rights for most of that time, has done so much for the sport, but those opening notes of Lou Bega’s Mambo No 5 presented an irresistible argument: the world is a better place when there’s live Test cricket on free-to-air TV.
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