Just Not Cricket

I was thinking today as I was walking along the road towards the SCG that it must be almost twenty years since I went to a test match on my own, and I certainly never thought I'd be attending a Sydney test match on my own because going to Old Trafford seemed adventurous enough at the time.

I got into cricket when I was about fourteen because there was nothing much to do during the summer holidays and I ended up watching a test match on the BBC and sort of worked out the rules as I went along. The problem was I never found anyone else who was interested in it because the game had a reputation as being something that old men enjoyed, and I suppose back then it was.

For a while I went to Old Trafford on my own, taking the train into Manchester Picadilly and changing to the rickety old Altrincham branch line, which was how you got there before they built the metrolink trams. When I was fifteen I went to three consecutive days of a West Indies test match, saved the money from my Saturday job for ages to pay for all the tickets and the train fares, though back then it only cost £3 to get in because I was under sixteen, which seems incredible now. I loved going to Old Trafford and eventually became a junior member and then a full member and always enjoyed the gentle nature of the game, the old men with transistor radios, the old lady in the front row who used to fall asleep in her pink raincoat and wake up if the crowd roared a six.

And then one day I heard a girl in my French class talking about watching the cricket and I turned around and said "God, you watch it as well?" and we both laughed because of course, watching cricket was deeply uncool. So for a while I had a soul mate and between us we managed to follow Lancashire up and down the country in her big sister's red mini as well as following England, especially in the ashes test matches.

Her parents had Sky TV, which wasn't very common in the 1980's, so we used to sit up all night following England's fortunes abroad and if they were playing the Aussies we'd pretend we were sitting on the hill at the SCG and sing along with all the songs we knew the words to. And she had that board game called "Test Match" where you rolled a little steel ball down a plastic chute for the bowler's arm and tried to get one of your plastic batsmen to hit it. We'd spend ages arguing over who was having Steve Waugh on their team and then her big sister would open the game as though she was commentating for the BBC in the style of Richie Benaud; Morning David, morning everyone, and welcome to this beautiful morning at the Sydney cricket ground. Always the Sydney cricket ground.

At sixteen, my cricketing friend left school and started working in a bank, which meant she suddenly had a bit of money, most of which she saved towards following the England cricket team on their foreign tours, along with her sister.

Her parents didn't charge her any rent and her grandad used to bung her regular wads of cash, so she was pretty well off. I was still at school of course, and after that I was at university and as I no longer lived at home I could barely afford to pay my rent, let alone go swanning off to Antigua or Sri Lanka. I was always glad on her behalf, you know, but I was equally envious of her foreign travel and felt distinctly left out of what had been our cricketing trio, especially when they really did go to Australia and really did get themselves a ticket to sit on the hill at the SCG, I mean, it wasn't even like I could go round to her parents house to watch it on Sky TV with her being away, and playing Test Match on your own at the dining room table just doesn't have the same allure.

So fast forward twenty years and here I am, walking along the road towards the SCG for the January test match and if you'd have told me I'd have been here I think I'd have jumped around the room in absolute joy back then because I don't think there was anything else I'd have wished for more than that.

These days I haven't the energy (or the suspension) to jump about, and you know what? You just can't get that enthusiasm back, just can't feel the same way about it, even though you can remember how you felt at the time and you can remember all the players and who batted at what number, these days those players are long retired and the ones doing battle on the pitch look too young to drive a car. I know, I know, I'm sounding very old, but today at the SCG I felt very old.

It all started at lunchtime because there was a bloke holding the microphone for channel 9 at the boundary rope and when he turned around I realised it was Mark Taylor. Mark Taylor used to open the batting for Australia back in the 1980's so he's one of those old heroes of mine and yes, I knew he'd long since retired and I knew he did the commentary on channel 9 because I've seen him, but seeing him today without the make-up he probably wears for the studio interviews made me realise exactly how old he'd become and I thought God, you know, another ten years and he'll be turning into Richie Benaud, who's always seemed sort of frail-looking, even when he was younger.

And then there was the etiquette, or lack of it, some of which might just be the way they do things here in Australia and some of which I'm convinced must be a general slip in standards over the years.

So for a start, the crowd here moves about during the overs, a strict no-no in Britain, where you don't get up from your seat or return to your seat while an over is being bowled. And yes, that means waiting at the top of the steps with your pint of beer while six balls go by but it's no hassle and it prevents you from disturbing other people while they're trying to watch the game.

Secondly, the Australian crowd are such terrible losers that they don't offer even a polite applause when the opposition scores a boundary. Just take a look at these photos of the Indian crowd celebrating the fall of a wicket and look at the faces of those Aussie children who've turned around in their seats to look at them, totally confused at the sight of people who are not dressed in green and gold having something to celebrate.

The Australians have a saying, second is the first loser, which kind of sums up how they feel about not winning, especially at sport. The policeman is one of six who were quickly drafted in to keep an eye on this small crowd of Indians, you know, in case they caused any trouble, though it was obvious it would have been the aussies in the neighbouring seats who'd have been the ones starting the trouble because they were just seething at their team's batting collapse.

But in the end it was the newspaper that did it. I was sitting in the Don Bradman stand, a place that cops all of the sun and hardly any of the shade after about one in the afternoon, so I eventuallly went off into the tunnel under the stand to get some shade and thought I'd buy a nice broadsheet to pass the time between overs (it being a bit of a lonely pursuit being on your own at the cricket).

Except no, I couldn't buy a newspaper because there wasn't even a shop. The only things I could buy were ice-cream, beer or gourmet hot dogs (though surely these words are mutually exclusive?). No shop, no newspapers, no golf umbrellas, no little old men with transistor radios, just lots of sweaty Australians pushing and shoving their way to the front of the beer queue and not bothering to apologise when they stand on your toes, and all of this without even waiting for the end of the over.

They say cricket had to modernise because it needed to attract a younger crowd, and I don't doubt it; I just wish the younger crowd knew how to behave. Sharing a test match with them today, I felt far more lonely than I ever did sitting with the oldies on the pavillion at Old Trafford, even the ones who were asleep.