The Hill

The Sydney new year's test match is another one of those annual sporting events the aussies go wild over and this year the visitors are India.

Not that I'm much of a follower of Indian cricket, but they're as passionate about their game as the Australians are, so I was looking forward to catching the test match before we go home.

The Sydney Cricket Ground is easily within walking distance of our flat, in fact the two ends of the wicket are referred to as the Paddington end and the Randwick end, so living in Randwick, it's incredible I haven't been here all year. The limiting factor has always been having nobody to care for Ella while we're at the game, our babysitters having never actually set eyes on her because she's always asleep by the time they arrive. I mean, you couldn't just leave her awake with someone she's never met.

And today was no different because Ella's nursery is closed for Christmas, a bit of a sticky situation when we're trying to pack up and sell our things, exactly the time we need daycare to be open, though it's not quite as bad a situation as when arrived without daycare last January. Anyway, as usual we're doing it all in shifts, which means today was my turn at the cricket and tomorrow it's Darren's turn.

The SCG is a great ground, though they got rid of the legendary hill years ago and replaced it with proper seating. The hill was notorious in the cricket world because the crowds that gathered on the grass were rowdy in the extreme, so the hill wasn't somewhere you'd consider standing if you had any sort of objection to the back of your legs being used as a toilet (yes, it was really that bad).

Anyway, things improved a bit when they scrapped the grass and put in the seats, though the atmosphere of the SCG matches was changed forever because, disorderly as they might have been, the crowd on the hill were genuinely funny, you know, having fun, the sort of thing that attracts the attention of law makers and law enforcers across Australia, all of whom seem intent on imposing rules exactly as they are written down, with absolutely no exceptions.

This year even the seating on the hill is closed because they're constructing a new multi-level stand right behind it. And this year they've had a record low number of arrests on the first day of the Sydney test match, which goes to show it's all about where the fans are sitting rather than what they're sitting on.