Travelogue - Australia

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.

In the stadium he took us to the Stumps Lounge a unique place that was created in 1995 using cricket stumps cut in two halves and which had the signatures of each team that had played at the ground. As they conceptualised this lounge the WACA contacted every cricketer that had played there over the years, wherever they were in the world, and using friends, cricketers and where needed even sending someone over, to collect the autographs on the stump. My mind was asking – this is such a treasure and imagine the person flying around the world with it as he collected the signatures, how he must have been feeling.

Two stumps caught my attention – First, the December 1975, 2^nd test between West Indies and Australia at Perth. The West Indies were world beaters at that time and in this 6 test series were expected to run over Australia, but in the end they lost 5 of the tests. Australia had Dennis Lillee, Jeff Thompson the most fearsome fast bowlers then. The one test West Indies won was this 2^nd test. It has an interesting memory for me. When this test was in progress, there was a domestic cricket match going on in Bangalore and I was at the stadium. The action on the ground was dull. The large crowd, and like me, many had transistors and were listening to the Perth test commentary. As the West Indies started batting, right in the first over Roy Fredericks the opening bat went on the back foot, and with a bowlers back drive, straight drove a Jeff Thompson (IIRC) fast delivery over the bowlers head for a six. Given his speed of bowling, the kind of power needed to hit such a six was mind boggling and the Bangalore crowd erupted with cheers. The players on the field were so startled, since nothing was really going on, but the reaction of the players was rather funny.

The other stump was the India Australia test from 1977 when Mohinder Amarnath scored 90 and 100, Gavaskar scored 127 in the 2^nd 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.

Exhilarated and excited, we didn’t see much else of Perth and left for Melbourne, where, after all the official meetings once again Kelvin had a half day and by sheer courtesy asked me the same question. Even before I could answer, he knew the answer and was resigned to his fate. Yes, the afternoon would be spent at the Melbourne Cricket Ground or MCG as it is popularly known.

The stadium welcomed us with this statue of the Great Shane Warne and once inside the enormity of the stadium overwhelms you.

The most interesting snippet of news was that notwithstanding its name as MCG, it is used for various other field games and the curators are such geniuses that they can convert the entire ground into whatever sporting event they need. No idea how they do it or what technology they use, but apparently this is a unique feature since Cricket, Football, Rugby, Soccer, even the Olympics have been played on this ground. If the guide is to be believed ground requirements can be changed swiftly. The ground looks majestic and if you manage to climb to the topmost seats, the panoramic view is stupendous.