It's the summer of 2005.
The country is swept up in Ashes fever as the greatest Test series of all time unfolds before our very eyes.
Test cricket was on free-to-air TV back then, allowing fanatics and casual observers alike to become engrossed in the sheer theatre of the sport's purest format.
As an impressionable 12-year-old, I already fell into the first category.
I was fully hooked on that series before a ball had been bowled. I was acutely aware that England had their first realistic chance of toppling Australia for almost two decades.
I was even more aware that England were led by a Yorkshireman, a Sheffielder and a Wednesday fan in Michael Vaughan. Unlike the current incumbent who supports the other lot.
Australia were full of superstars. Langer. Hayden. Ponting. Gilchrist. Lee. Gillespie. McGrath.
But there was one star that shone that bit brighter than the rest. And not just his barnet.
Shane Warne was one of a kind. He had been England's nemesis for more than a decade before that series. He was the best bowler that ever walked the planet. And what's more, he knew he was.
The 2005 Ashes series rightly goes down in the annals of cricket as the best ever. But when you break it down, there's one main reason for that. And he bowled leg spin.
Without Warne, Australia would have lost that series comfortably.
He averaged 19.92 with the ball, taking 40 wickets including five in an innings three times. With the bat, he contributed 249 runs at a strike rate of over 70.
Warne was the only reason the Aussies got close at Edgbaston. He was the only reason England wobbled in chasing a modest target at Trent Bridge. His defiance at Old Trafford got them a draw.
I loved Kevin Pietersen's belligerence. Andrew Flintoff was basically Superman. But it was Adam Gilchrist's constant remarks of "nice, Shane" and "bowling, Warney" that I was repeating ad infinitum at the end of a day's play. Still do, sometimes.
Warne's ball to Andrew Strauss at Edgbaston is still the best I've ever seen. I wasn't old enough to appreciate his delivery to Mike Gatting dubbed 'the ball of the century', but the Strauss wicket was better in any case.
It pitched so far outside off stump the England opener was happy to kick it away. But it turned square and knocked over his middle pole, making him look foolish and making Warne look every inch the genius he was.
That ball has been etched on my brain ever since.
But for all his heroics, Warne was on the losing side.
Shane Warne was a born winner, and there was no way he was going to sail off into the sunset without reminding everyone of that.
Fast forward 18 months, he spun Australia to a 5-0 whitewash over England Down Under, reclaiming the Ashes and reaching 700 Test wickets in the process.
That was his cue to exit stage left.
But we hadn't seen the last of this maverick. This magician. He would continue playing franchise cricket, proving himself invaluable in the Big Bash and IPL in particular.
And the old showmanship never went away. As he proved when he described live on air how he was going to take the wicket of Brendon McCullum - the New Zealand opener regarded as one of the best T20 batsmen in the world.
When he did retire from playing for good, Warne was among cricket's best pundits, analysts and thinkers.
He was a dream for Sky Sports. His knowledge and charisma went hand in hand and almost made you forget it was raining as one of English cricket's traditional delays came and went in a flash.
Warne made you stop and listen. When he talked about the sport he mastered, you absorbed every single word.
The relationship he struck up with the likes of Nasser Hussain, David Lloyd and Rob Key both on and off screen showed the warmth he emitted.
He had an insatiable appetite and love for cricket, but it was his personality that saw him transcend the sport. Tributes have been paid from far and wide, from many who wouldn't know a silly mid-off from a googly.
Warne was loved in England almost as much as he was in Australia. His seven years at Hampshire saw a stand named after him at the Rose Bowl, an honour now rightly replicated at the MCG.
At the end of that 2005 Ashes series, as England edged towards the draw that would see them secure the urn, Warne was still giving as good as he got on the boundary at the Oval.
And as the Barmy Army traded jibes with the great man, they sung it better than I ever could.
"We only wish you were English."
Well bowled, Shane.
