Travelogue - Australia - Part 1
This travelogue even if the title says - Australia is misleading. Its more about Cricket since on my visits there barring for one exception I ended up making it a cricket tour. This sounds rather strange but then this relates to a visit to Australia where, by design, the focus ended up as cricket.
There was a conference in Delhi and I bumped into a very nice and wonderful gentleman named Kelvin and he insisted that I visit Australia on business since there were many opportunities together. Australia I knew was a vast country and so he suggested that I arrive into Perth and then we would go to Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and meet all clients and research the market. He promised to make all arrangements for the meetings and visits and I landed in Perth.
I found that he was so exceedingly nice that even though he had a packed schedule for me he had kept one afternoon to show me the sights of his country and he insisted that I must get a taste of Australia. I happily agreed and on the appointed day of the tourist visit he made his first “mistake”. He asked me, a stranger to Australia, what I would like to see. Instantly I said I wanted to see the WACA or the Western Australia Cricket Association stadium. Happily he took me for the visit.
A elderly gentleman who was some 70+ gave us a guided tour of the stadium and soon we were talking cricket and exchanging notes and he was rather excited, because, as he said – most visitors ask questions, but you are sharing stuff with me. He and his equally elderly wife ran the souvenir shop at the stadium with great passion.
The other stump was the India Australia test from 1977 when Mohinder Amarnath scored 90 and 100, Gavaskar scored 127 in the 2nd innings while Bobby Simpson who was the Captain hit 176 and Bedi the Indian captain took 10 wkts, but India lost the match.
The stadium had a very nice museum with many pictures and other memorabilia and one of them was a gift from the Tamilnadu cricket association depicting a south Indian temple. The other picture with this is the famous ball with which Trevor Chappell bowled the infamous underarm delivery to prevent New Zealand from winning the test against Australia on the instructions of his brother and Captain Greg Chappell. There was also a lovely photograph of the Indian team of 1947.
As I shared the above memory and recognised many names and scores, etc the elderly gent asked if I wanted to go down to the middle and I jumped at the chance. It was a great feeling to be in the middle of the ground imagining the noise, crowd as one played.
The stadium welcomed us with this statue of the Great Shane Warne and once inside the enormity of the stadium overwhelms you.
The commentary box perched high up and with an eagle’s view is ultra modern but sadly they don’t allow visitors inside.
The next and concluding part of this blog can be read here.
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