Barmy Army’s lead trumpeter Simon Finch had a task on hand for the day after, what he and other travelling England fans are calling, “the best away win ever”. Having flown to India without a chant for Hyderabad’s unexpected hero, the left-arm debutant spinner Tom Hartley, he was busy composing the background score.

With figures of 7/69 in the first game of the tour, there was an urgency in the Barmy Army rank and file to come up with a special song for Hartley. By evening it was ready. “The chant is ready, it is inspired by the Whitney Houston song ‘I wanna dance with somebody’,” he tells The Indian Express.

Late into the night on Sunday, the 1,000-odd strong Army of England fans in Hyderabad didn’t the Houston-kind of complain. Gathered at the city’s ’10 Downing Street’ watering hole, they sang and danced through the night. Finch would come up with an apt song in the alien hand – “Everywhere we go, the people want to know who we are”. The in-house DJ would soon cut off his music and play his own. The Army was in no mood to complain or even to leave the place.

“We went on well into midnight for sure. They first switched off the music systems, but we still kept going. Then they switched off a few lights. We responded by getting even louder. And then they switched off all the lights, but we still carried on in complete darkness. We can’t wait to be in Vizag,” chuckles Finch.

At the stadium all through the first Test, the English fans had made their presence felt. “It was just an unbelievable atmosphere, definitely better than what we get back home,” Chuck Adolphy, who is Barmy Army’s tour manager, tells The Indian Express. “We were interestingly placed in between the school children. Back home, we are the ones who usually keep the mood going. But these kids were louder than what we have seen. So it was a real challenge to build one atmosphere of our own. But it made for some lovely moments.”

Well there we have it.

Tom Hartley singing his own Barmy Army song already ???? pic.twitter.com/3JnbQsg9mu

— England's Barmy Army ???????????????????????????????? (@TheBarmyArmy) January 29, 2024

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Despite not having won a Test series in India since 2012, according to Adolphy a record number of fans are expected to turn up in India through the course of the series. While Dharamshala – the venue which is hosting the final Test, is set to be the biggest attraction, according to Adolphy, there is no better crowd-puller than Bazball.

Oh, I wanna dance with Tom Hartley ????

Any song suggestions for the Lancs Murali? pic.twitter.com/07rGT2HdXe

— England's Barmy Army ???????????????????????????????? (@TheBarmyArmy) January 29, 2024

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

“They have shown us there is a new way to play Test cricket and they have imprinted their style. Even if they step down tomorrow, there is no way, we can go back to that traditional way of playing Test cricket. The travelling fans tell you how even they are brought into this approach and it is what you come to pay and watch. Since the Bazball came on we are witnessing more membership requests and with every Test, the ticket demand has only been increasing,” says Adolphy who is making all the arrangements including hotel stay, commute to the ground and travel within India.

When the schedule was announced with Tests being played in the non-traditional centres, there were concerns if England fans would turn up. But according to Adolphy, it turned into an unexpected game changer. “A lot of them have been coming here for years. And since the venues were scattered all across, in a vast country like India, it is tough to manage the logistics. But apart from getting to watch Bazball, most of them also wanted to explore Hyderabad, Vizag, Rajkot, Ranchi and Dharamshala as they have never been before,” Adolphy says.

Meanwhile, Finch gives a low down of the chants that they have been ready with. The one for Mark Wood is inspired by the Beatles’ track Twist and Shout. But there is a problem too. “He takes way too long to finish an over! Since he is putting in too much energy, it goes for seven-eight minutes and then you have Stokes changing the field almost every ball. So to keep blowing the trumpet and the chant going for that long is really tiring. We are just hoping he gets a wicket every now and then so we get a break!” Finch says.

When Ollie Pope was changing the course of the match, the Barmy Army was there to lend him their voice. Chants of “Hot, hot, hot….Ollie Pope” hung in the air for several minutes as Pope completed the most enterprising century ever made by a visiting batsman on Indian soil.

During their pre-tour preparation camp in Abu Dhabi, one of the standing instructions from former Test star Graeme Swann, who coached the team’s spinners, was to silence the local crowd. Once that is done, the English can expect the Barmy Army to make them feel at home.