And so to Adelaide Oval, the super-fine and functional cricket stadium in leafy, gentrified and really quite cool North Adelaide, where Australia is playing New Zealand in the world’s first day-night Test cricket match. And it’s really quite good.
Checkerboard outfield with four shades of green. Mighty Moreton bay fig trees at the southern end. A grassy, chock-full hill under a grand old heritage scoreboard. And a bright hot pink ball is fizzing about like a hi-vis, a half-sucked Jaffa. And it’s brilliant.
They did Adelaide Oval up a few years ago, the “Sackers” (South Australian Cricket Association, Saca, “Sack a spuds”, all that), and they’ve done it really well. Bulbous, almost Arabian roofs shade the east and west stands. The south end is all corporate glass and media and wealthy types in suits, as it’s always been at the cricket. Plenty of old merged with new. And it’s just a crackerjack place to play and watch the great game. It’s also good that it hasn’t been re-named the Dingle’s Hardware Super Dome or some such, for that would be wrong, perhaps evil.
While it’s as heavily branded as any modern sporting stadium, there’s plenty of nods to heritage. The scoreboard’s been there since 1911. There’s a Chappell stand and a Sir Edwin Smith stand, named after an “English-born brewer, businessman, councillor, mayor, politician and benefactor”, according to the all-knowing one-eyed spider god that is the Internet.
There’s a Gavin Wanganeen Stand named for the champion Port Adelaide Australian rules defender and another for Mark Ricciuto, the burly midfielder for the Adelaide Crows. Locals love their Australian rules football. They tried having a rugby league team a few years ago when Rupert Murdoch wanted to own the sport, and they called them then Adelaide Rams. And then they did not, for they were no more.
In the middle of the western stand is the Sir Donald Bradman pavilion. There’s a Sir Donald Bradman Drive running from the airport into town. The Don made his home in Adelaide and played golf for Kooyonga GC and he was also quite good at squash and billiards. Once he lost a game of billiards to Walter Lindrum, who was world champion. So Bradman installed a billiards table in his home and practiced every day for a year, then “matched him,” according to his proud wife Jessie, who must have been quite mad also.
But yes, quite good at sport, our Don Bradman.
Great sport is being had by the rowdy fellows under the scoreboard that’s been there since 1911. Most have been here in the sun since 2pm and have consumed many beers. One is wearing a wedding dress and a baggy green cap. Chances are come the last overs of the final session, when it’s normally bed-time for many people, these men will be bopping about like a rum-crazed pod of spider monkeys.
Got him! Yes! Peter Siddle, the toiler, the blood-nut paceman, fizzes one off the seam and Ross Taylor is caught behind. Fine bowling. Mitchell Starc comes on to bowl to Brendon McCullum. Two men are out for the hook; they know their man. And then … gone! McCullum, probably the biggest and best whacker in international cricket today, flays at Starc’s tempting, bouncy off-stump fruits and nicks out after cutting up rashly. So the Kiwis have lost three wickets for four, and five all up.
And it’s not even going on dark, when the bad things happen.
Despite New Zealand’s failures, the wicket looks a peach. Straw-coloured, but not pale. Fresh straw, straight from the field. Good bounce, bit of seam. Yet batsman can hit through the line confidently if the ball is up in the slot. And they do, and it is good cricket.
Siddle continues to pound in like Merv Hughes; hard, robust but unlike Merv, he’s Australia’s most famous sporting vegan. There aren’t many. Ross Taylor, coming off 290 in the Waca Test, strokes him down the ground with ease. Siddle looks at him. Taylor looks back. And you think, My but I do love this game. So many moving parts. So much story.
Story? Phil Hughes. The feisty little buccaneer passed away this very day last year, drawing an audible moan of loss from this journo when he heard. It was the same across the country. It was shocking, tragic, affecting news. I didn’t know him. You didn’t need to know him. Like Jonah Lomu’s passing, and Heath Ledger’s, these were young, vital, talented people. And they entertained us. Their passing pained us. All lives aren’t equal. Nor are all deaths.
Anyway, life goes on and this day-night Test match goes on, and here we are coming up to 6pm when normally a man’s thoughts would turn to post-match boozer but now it’s … the dinner Break? A dinner break? And for how long? The one at “tea” went for 20 minutes, as normal. Then after it we’ll have a 40-minute dinner break from 6:20pm to 7pm. Then two hours of night-time Test cricket. Hello, future.
Got him! Yes! Starc again. This time it’s Mitchell Santner, out for 31 going hard and driving on the up and he’s bowled by the hot pink action of Big Starcy, the New Mitch. And you wonder what Old Mitch – Mitchell Johnson – would be thinking watching this hot pink ball action. Looks like fun bowling with it. Lot more fun than pounding your very soul into the hard-baked super-highway the Waca dished up. That thing was a bigger punish than being nude on the Nullarbor. Yet bowling with the pink ball and swinging it about looks like terrific fun.
Shot! Left-hander Mark Craig smashes Siddle down the ground. The ball was up and swung a bit but Craig liked the look of it and smoked it straight and well. “This wicket is a cracker,” says my mate Walshy. “The pink ball is behaving much like a red one.”
“And you can see it tremendous,” says Walshy’s brother Walshy. “We’re here in row 20 at square leg and we can see it.”
And then we have dinner and it’s going on dusk. Then the players come back out. And it’s in this period, they say, when bad things happen; in the half-light, before the lights truly take affect and when the sky is painted with mauves and purples and the odd jot of blood orange. Where the wild things are.
We see Tim Southee swinging at the hip, Siddle taking his 200th Test wicket and the Kiwis losing their ten wickets for 202. Australia comes in and the pink ball swings, so batsmen miss and two of them depart. These are good and funky times, and you can’t take your eyes off it. And you eat a hot dog and take a sip of your beer and say to Walshy, “This has been a crackerjack day of Test cricket if you are okay with ball having ascendency over bat.”
“You know what this is?” replies Walshy. “This is history. We are witnessing Test cricket history. And I reckon it’s grouse.”
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