Denizens of the bleachers,
Listening to the wireless after the fourth day's play of the New Year Test in Sydney, someone came on and mentioned a newsflash that Cricket Australia, in all their magnanimous generosity, had decided to throw open the gates on day five to all comers for a gold coin donation to the McGrath Foundation.
After looking at the outrageous ticket prices being charged all week [the heavily promoted $30 tix are in fact just a couple of bays of "hot seats" in sun - or rain - all day] it seemed like an offer too good to refuse.
Everyone likes free, particularly Sydneysiders.
Australia had set Pakistan 465 to win.
They were a wicket down at the start of play with a hopelessly distant 410 more runs to find, the nightwatchman at the crease, a day to play and Australia nine to get...so a good day's play was still in prospect.
Could be all over in an hour or it could take all day, such is the nature, the vagaries and appeal of Test cricket - no one really has any idea at all what will eventually happen, none.
Found myself on an obscenely early [for me] train on a busy Saturday morning into Central to catch the event bus to the ground [whatever happened to the tradition of Test matches starting at 11am sharp?].
As the old vehicle rumbled up Albion St with a full load, the chap sitting next to me and wearing ear-buds blurted out at 10.05am "in for a short day".
"ah ha. how so?"
"another one down, wicket in the first over of the day. Hazelwood, caught and bowled"
"so that's the nightwatchman gone?"
"oh no" he said "it's their good opener, the nightwatchman is still in".
On approaching the only gate open to riff-raff like me, the crowd inside made that unmistakable roar - another one down, clearly, but my hobble along on the walking stick just hadn't made the stadium in time.
Two gorn before even getting there soon after the start, and seven to get.
A Greencoat scanned a single ticket continuously, letting people through the turnstiles, and a dozen well-meaning folk dressed in gaudy pink were waiting to nab you holding even brighter pink collection buckets.
Given that entrance was effectively free, wondered why on earth they were bothering to assiduously count the numbers - then it dawned on me - to work out how many stooges had flicked a 5c coin into the rattle-tin instead of a dollar change.
My bony arse made it's way into an uncomfortable bucket seat reserved for cripples only at the back of Bay 30.
It quickly became all too apparant that it was now down to wickets and time.
Runs were out of the equation.
Settled in for the widely expected block-a-thon until stumps.
All kinds of people were flooding in, rapidly filling up the Brewongle Stand and concourse, which apart from the Members Enclosure, was the only part of the ground open.
There were plenty of Pakistan supporters there of course; full family's, men, women, children, even wizened old ladies who were on two sticks and clearly in their 80's, but puzzlingly, there was a distinct lack of hijabs.
No women - and there were plenty of them waving Pakistani flags - were wearing traditional head coverings - they all had on lavish make-up and team caps; the younger hipper girls, the wrong way around.
Why they all came in such numbers when their team was in more trouble than the early settlers is anyone's guess, but to their credit, they were faithful to their side to the bitter end.
Everyone was there - and still they kept coming.
Regular cricket punters who'd probably been there for the duration of the match, fathers teaching their sons how to watch first class cricket, people-watching gawkers, mobs of fully-bearded pre-loaded hipsters who perhaps were just carrying on through from Friday night, fools hopelessly trying to push prams between rows of seats, vintage wino's with a cricket problem, breast-feeding millenials, classic bogans with mullets out of the '70's, pink sombrero wearing drunks, clutches of kids pressed up against the boundary fence pleading for autographs, hobo's - obviously homeless, even a bag-lady or two, the regulation contingent of spastics seen at every sporting match, cross-dressers [yes, there was an unshaven man in a dress - a refugee from a buck's night?], young folk much more interested in their telephones, those annoying types who stare at everyone all the time, an old piss-pot with the staggers who's BOONY ARMY t-shirt barely covered his spectacular gigantic beer gut, jolly folk who appeared to be on perpetual holiday and others who'd decided to just drop by on their way to something else.
...and still they came.
The crowd was getting genuinely big and noisy - most likely the largest for the fifth day of a Test match in Sydney in living memory.
...and still they came.
It occurred to me at one point before lunch "shit. this is getting a bit dangerous here. could be a crowd crush on" and just at that moment, they opened the Doug Walters [now Victor Trumper] Stand concourse to relieve the pressure, and there was a wild every-man-for-himself stampede for the shady seats.
It was a picture postcard day in the Emerald City, about 25°C with some passing white fluffy clouds, the colour of creams on green, the thwack of willow on leather...
Younis Khan took out the long handle and was looking to get hold of the spinners until he lobbed a lolly of a catch off Lyon to Hazo at mid-on.
The assembled went crazy, except for the woman in front of me was who was right in the moment; painting her nails, you guessed it, hot pink.
Six to get.
Then the nightwatchman, Mr Yasir Shah, after a well-made 13 and holding up an end for a couple of hours, got a tickle on a good'un from Keefey and the genuine 12th man, The Birdman, pouched a great two-handed catch an inch off the ground at second slip.
The crowd went beserk.
Five to get.
Then it was lunch.
Got myself a warm bottle of Coke and a thermo-nuclear five-day-old offal footy pie for $11.60, but eschewed the beer queue, where they were flogging a hitherto unknown snakey substance called Great Northern Mid-Strength, the cost of a plastic cup of which was pushing a niner.
Well used to knowing what cricket ground beer, at the best of times, tastes like, and it's never, ever, good.
Went back outside the ground and a pass-out ticket was thrust in my hand.
A pass-out ticket on a free admission day?
WTF?
They must be extremely rare now, those.
Haven't seen a pass-out ticket at the SCG ever since they banned bringing your own esky into the ground with a 24 can per person per day limit - that must have been many many decades ago now - and then suddenly they really started to monetise the bar concessions, by outlawing BYO.
No alcohol allowed in, no one allowed out, no pass-outs, once you'd left the ground that was it, no getting back in, unless you were fool enough and sober enough to pay again.
Decided to sit under the magnificent gigantic Hill's Weeping Fig trees along Driver Avenue [planted in 1919 in remembrance of Our Glorious Dead] and laid back comfortably on a park bench with a couple cigarette smokers.
Enjoyed nonchalantly toking on a fat scoob of powerful weed, a choice lovingly hand-rolled refeer of the ol' cannabis sativa; you know, that sort of thing.
Great clouds of pungent smoke billowed from my mouth and nostrils from time to time; stacks of people were milling about, heavily-armed police and security men were pacing up and down, but no-one gave a shit.
Nobody even gave me a second glace.
Bless.
Pondered this for a while and thought it's probably a function of the fact that us baby boomers are now temporarily in charge of the whole country, and us old stoners are only now beginning to get the approval/permission to insist on our God-given and inalienable human right to get off one's tits, wherever and whenever one pleases.
Everyone is, one way o another, at the cricket and It was just nice to be well baked for the second session of play.
Completely normal.
Utterly harmless.
Went through the turnstiles again, paid another dollar to the charity people and artificially inflated the official attendance by one, in order to purloin/souvenir the pass-out ticket.
Play resumed.
Seeing Starkers coming off his long run from the University of NSW [Randwick] End is something else again.
He gently swings around into his run-up to a perfect delivery stride then a lovely text book straight-as-a-die arm that flies with a snap of the wrist at the point of delivery...you try to watch the ball out of his hand...but at some 70 odd yards away, more often than not you lose sight of the pill in flight, and then a millisecond later the batsman jumps, and the ball gently down rolls back down the pitch and you think to yourself "fark! that was quick - that hurried him a bit".
He is quick, very quick.
At his best, MA Starc looks unplayable most of the time.
Got all the swing skills, and if you look very closely, he seems to get some extra pace off the wicket, also.
But at the end of every over he came down to long leg virtually in front of me and he looked the very picture of pain.
Grim agony was etched on his face; Starkers was nervously touching his limbs to see if they were all still there, his bones and muscles must have been in a tormented sore-as-hell flame ache, and at one point he just sat down and looked at his shoes with a vacant stare and then put his head in his hands.
Completely and utterly buggered - the fifth day of his 6th test match in a row.
Why would a man even try to hide his humanity in that situation?
And yet, he could still send them down with all the aplomb in the world at 140+ kph.
A class act.
Soon after lunch came the surprise of the day, the novelty debut of the 12th man substitute fieldsman, Mickey Edwards, which was worth the price of admission alone.
Warner went off for a bit [the curry at lunch might not have agreed with him], and on came Mickey, a tall lanky young chap with a small borrowed Baggy perched atop his peroxide blonde surfer-boy mop-top that tumbled down to his shoulders.
The crowd started asking among themselves "who the hell is this bloody bloke???"
He went up to Skippy Smiffy at first slip and appeared to ask him where he should field.
Smiffy just held his arms out in puzzlement and shrugged his shoulders and might have said to him something along the lines of "I don't know. Why ask me? Field where you like, son. You'll get the hang of it".
That sent Mickey into a spin and he wandered around in circles for a bit, before he settled himself at point to the right-hander, or thereabouts - and he ended up staying there the whole time he was on.
His name briefly came up on the scoreboard and soon enough the crowd were barracking "Hey Mickey! Who's your barber!" "Hey Mickey! Watch out for the cut shot!" "If the hat fits, wear it, Mickey!" "Hey Mickey! Give us a wave!" or in the more irreverant parts of the ground "Hey Mickey! Drop yr daks and gissa look at ya donger!"
He became an instant folk hero, for doing absolutely nothing at all, except running onto a test match ground with all that hair and a silly hat.
Everytime he came anywhere near the ball the crowd took it upon itself to go absolutely ape-shit, screaming wildly, madly for Mickey, and then a big mob of rowdies starting chanting the old Tori Basil tune "Hey Mickey, you're so fine, you blow my mind. Hey Mickey! Hey Mickey!"
Mickey got a crazy-mad standing ovation when he dived to save a certain four, getting tied up in the boundary rope signage as he hit the deck all arms and legs.
Talk about larf!
Lyon was getting in on the fun - high-fiving him, slapping Mickey on the arse, stopping running theatrically to allow Mickey to chase after the ball to raucous cheering, and generally taking the mickey out of Mickey, but Mickey steadfastly refused to acknowledge or even look at the crowd, no doubt in grave fear that they might put him off his game.
But he did do a little wave as he came off to another standing ovation - it was almost exactly 15 minutes of fame - right there.
[It turns out on reading the papers the next morning, that Mickey is a second grade district fast bowler for Manly who was at the ground as a net bowler and was walking through the Members Bar in his creams when someone or another, he couldn't or wouldn't say who it was, tapped him on the shoulder and told him to go out and field - he was as surprised as anyone. He was asked on interview what it felt like to be the No.1 trending topic on Twitter for about half an hour and he replied "I don't use Twitter very much, but that sounds cool"].
There must have been a jester involved somewhere in all of that.
In the over after Mickey made his appearance on the ground, Starkers bowled a real pearler, which produced the best sight of the day - Shafiq's off stump bent back at a 45 degree angle seemingly stuck in the Bulli soil mud - after his feet got rooted in the crease and he played all over, around and on top of the ball...and played on something horrible.
The crowd went ding-bat delirious.
Four to get.
In the meantime, the Paki skippy Misbah was hanging around making a nuisance of himself in defence and then for some unknown reason started carting the slow men, until he was trying to tonk Keefey out of the park and mis-hit it, lofting the cork high wide and handsome.
The crowd watched the ball go up, up, and up, almost in silence, until Bowling Garry trousered a good catch on the move at mid-off, when everyone instantly lept to their feet and went fully, totally, bananas.
The noise was deafening.
Three to get.
No one had really noticed that Sarfraz had put together a very good, under the circumstances, half century -- he got a gentle, respectful round of applause and went on to top score by the length of street and remained not out at the denouement.
Then it was just a matter of time as the tail was cleaned up and we could say "we won the cricket!"
As 20,000+ voices roared their lungs out, there was also a sense of relief it was finished with, even though it was all over red rover well before tea.
Absolutely hoarse and parched, took advantage of everyone soaking in the team celebrations, and dashed down the stairs as fast as a gimp can go, and got the very last Frozen Fanta in ground before they closed up the shop.
Scored!
It tasted of very sweet victory.
Sat under the old fig trees again waiting for a bus back to Central, when a fat woman with peculiar unusually large angular breasts walked out of the SCG sweeping a white cane on the ground in front of her, and had a man on her arm who was clearly her "caller" at the match.
Thought hallucinations were beginning to take hold, ["a blind woman at the cricket!? surely you are seeing things?"] until another sight-challenged person, this time an ordinary looking middle-aged fellow with designer sunglasses and also sporting a white cane came by with someone who may have been his sighted brother - who didn't feel the need to wear shades - alongside him as they too walked the short distance to the bus stop.
What's the chances?
Been told since childhood that the only blind bastards at the cricket are the Umpires.
They would have loved it, the day's sound would have been outstanding for them.
And it's not hard to hide at the SCG, you can even got lost there, even though you've been coming to the much loved ground for 35+ years
Said it before, say it again - it's a cripple's nightmare.
Shamefully, it has to be the worst cricket ground in the country for spectator's ease and comfort.
A disgrace.
There are no lifts to speak of, everywhere there are steps, up and down all over the shop, uneven sloping ground, broken ashphalt, trip hazrads galore, great flights of stairs that appear to go nowhere, and do; you can walk into a dead end alleyway and have no idea where you are, or up a narrow corridor, open a door you think might let you out, and see a mob of folk in toques and starched shirts making canapes.
If you are in the beer queue or stumbling along the concourse to have a quick chunder in the dunnies, you cannot see any part of the playing arena at all, let alone the scoreboard - which is useless in any case - at no time does it show a complete scorecard, a light certainly doesn't come on next to a player's name when he fields the ball to tell you who it is, like the old-style manually operated scoreboard did.
The ground appears very tired, even though two of the stands are relatively new.
The whole joint looks like it was designed by a committee over several decades - which it was - nothing fits with anything.
The twin MA Noble/Bradman Stand is an abomination, no architectural merit whatsoever, it's ineffective "roof" looks like an afterthought; a cheap colorbond lid.
The poor old Bill O'Reilly Stand is suffering from concrete cancer, The Doug Walters aka The Victor Trumper Stand has lost any shine it may have had, and the Brewongle Stand is just a plain run-down mess.
While the Members Enclosure boasts a couple of nice Victorian relics, there's no money in the maintenance budget for old things - the roof of the Ladies Stand is rusting, while the Members Pavilion could do with a good lick of paint.
And the view from there has always been crap, anyway.
People like me still adore the old ground, as it's never really been much good anyway, but ever since they took down the old scoreboard and started building over The Hill, they missed their chance.
Now it's just a hideously cobbled together mish-mash.
Shame.
There's my whinge.
However, the Trustee's never listen to me.
But a marvellous day out was had by all, no question.
And the result?
Never In Doubt.
Over the moon, couldn't help myself but to drop by The Buzz Tipple Bar on Chalmers St, a "small bar" attached to a backpacker's hostel, and ask the barkeep to make me up a frosty schooner of tonic & lime with plenty of ice in celebration.
Back in the day, it didn't matter if you came out of the ground at the end of the day's play paralytic - the first post-match beer in the pub out of a cold glass tasted better than your first drink of the day, and much more refreshing, or debilitating, depending on how far gone you were.
Old habits die hard.
As the rattler rolled along back up the Bankstown line towards home, a pre-recorded comforting soothing female voice came on the train's Tannoy and said "Please help prevent delays. If you feel unwell, don't risk staying on the train. The staff at the next station will be able to help you".
Absolutely no chance of that, baby!
Just seen Straya do the three-zip whitewash to snatch one of those rare mysterious trophies in world sport that has no name.
The series' Hat Trick!
Woot!
Third Test Match [3-7 Jan 2017]
Australia 8/538 (dec) & 2/241 (dec).
Pakistan 315 & 244.
Australia won by 220 runs.
At Sydney Cricket Ground.
Crowd: 23,409 [Day 5].
