Field umpire Joel Madden, replete with KFC logos and a backwards baseball cap, kicks off proceedings with the traditional hollering of Play Ball.
The cameras zoom out in order to capture the pyrotechnic explosions which fill the stadium with smoke, while we the viewer are reminded that our experience would be all the richer had we invested in a Panasonic Ultra-HD 3D TV.
The giant screens high up in the stands implore the studio audience to break into raucous applause as we return from the break.
The segway camera trails on to the botox-inflated head of Michael Clarke as he explains the intricacies of the new compound plastic ball, in use for the first time this season after the regular leather ball struggled with the yellow astro turf wicket.
Clarke promises us more bounce, pace and the all important flight time from the new ball.
The countdown graphics flash across the screen, the firework smoke still clearing and the segway flying around between the slip fielders.
The crowd grows more feverish as every number appears.
The producer turns his cacophony of sound effects even louder as the bowlers runway lights up.
The frenetic atmosphere hits its peak, the crowd roars as the opening bowler sprints in and at full pace, unleashes a short ball which flies past the grill of the batsman’s helmet.
As the bowler jogs back to his mark, the TV audience are introduced to helmet cam and ball cam and sky cam – all with their respective sponsors and graphics – before the whole routine starts up again.
Brett Lee, sharing the commentary box with Sonia Krueger, reminisces that in his day rain this heavy would have seen the game called off.
“How fantastic it is that Cricket Australia had finally seen the light and dispatched with those temperamental grass wickets?” he asks Krueger, who responds with a timely reminder that Big Brother is starting again on Sunday night.
Indeed, T20 in 2020 was to be like nothing before it.
Following the 2019 season which had seen an unprecedented number of games lost to rain, Channel Nine took action to protect their multi-million dollar investment.
The former players who had made up their sports team were immediately relieved, save for Brett Lee and Michael Clarke who were to be teamed with the producers of The Voice.
The new team was given a clear mandate to do whatever it would take to drag cricket, kicking and screaming, into the 21st century.
The boys club at Cricket Australia had objected at every turn too, perhaps as to be expected.
They were valiant, though ultimately unsuccessful, in negotiating some commercial coverage of the upcoming Test series against Sri Lanka – to be played on the few remaining grass pitches at North Sydney Oval and Allan Border Field – which could now be streamed online courtesy of a generous offer from ABC Grandstand.
They’d tried to stand up against the concrete pitches, plastic balls and the Toyota Bonus Runs for any batsmen who could both clear the fence and hit the miniature Corolla being driven around the boundary by The Stig in a clever piece of Top Gear cross-promotion.
They insisted they’d draw the line at the suggestion that Joel Madden and Mel B would share the umpiring duties with a range of ex-Big Brother housemates and Getaway hosts, and in the end were very lucky to avoid the utterly unedifying spectacle of having Karl Stefanovic as a guest wicketkeeper in the mooted Celebrity Power Play.
The few cricket fans who remained on the Cricket Australia board were inconsolable.
The full stadiums and record TV audience was just the ammunition that the networks needed to wrest complete control of the game.
Cricket Australia, despite hosting a World Cup only five years ago, had been reduced to a casting agent, providing talent to a reality TV show and hoping to hang on to the commission.
Back in the middle, umpire Madden has referred a close LBW call to the DRS. The lines are now open, text two for not out.
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