Wackarites,
The punning was dreadful in the papers "Australia urns the Ashes!"
Won't bore you with the rest.
"Brilliant Aussies Humiliate Pathetic Poms", was all the Daily Terror could come up with as a front page headline.
Weak.
Tame; they were massacred, no-one left behind to tell the story.
News from the Mother Country has it that there was NO reportage of the event whatsoever in the fish-wraps in the Ol' Dart, and there was certainly no cause for jubilation in the Heart of the Empire.
Done cold by the Colonies, they were, the Poms, with two games to spare and now staring down the barrel of the ignominious disgracement of 5-nil.
Few things give me greater pleasure than to see the Pommy bastards cop a gigantic tusk up the runter at cricket.
There was a feeling of unbridled reflected joy & glory as one of the finest sights in world sport was being played out on the third day - "moving day" - in Perth...Poms being slowly, but unmercilessly, ground into the dust...to the tune of 9/662 dec.
Everybody has their opinions on the hinge of battle - the thing on which everything else swings - was it by far and away their best batsman, the mild-mannered Benny Stokes, going berserk in Bristol way back in September in the brain-explosion to end all brain-explosions?
We'll never know.
Was it the tourists getting utterly hammered by ten wickets at the Gabbatoir after winning the toss and putting on 300?
Smiffy was in it from the off with a lazy 141 not.
That could well have been it, there and then - the absolutely priceless 1-nil lead in a five match series.
Was it Mr. Dudley Root Esq calling the flip correctly and then incorrectly inviting Orstralia to bat and make a poultice in Adelaide at zero one down, ignoring the fact that he didn't have a sufficient arsenal, day or night?
And everybody knows what happened at the Pink Stink
Or was it Smiffy [again] departing the planet in Perth?
Sorry Pup, but your mantle as the best batsman of your generation is being seriously challenged by Skipper Smiffy here.
The double ton on a six-lane freeway was a simple joy to watch as it went on all day - proper Test cricket - the crisp cut shots, the glorious cover drives, the pulls, the swipes and sweeps and hoiks, the superlative textbook leg play all easily beating the hopelessly hapless field - even Cow Corner wasn't safe - and as the shadows grew longer it was plain comical to see the Baby-Faced Killer effortlessly twirl his bat around about above his head and just flick a short one way over the top of the only slip off some absolutely buggered Pommy bowler.
Anderson, Broad, Woakes, Overton and Ali all got hit for a hundred and then some.
And they were told about it - endlessly.
A master class.
SPD Smith has now been admitted to the Pantheon, if he hadn't been before.
At one point it was mentioned that someone with far too much time on their hands had calculated that Smiffy does up to 27 different movements of his body between facing every ball.
Crikey!
More fidgety than even MJ Clarke ever was, if that is humanely possible.
Was it Hey Hey Jonny Jonny Bairstow's unusual behaviour in a Perth bar before the tour even really began where all the wheels fell off the dodgy touring wagon?
Smiffy learnt alot while he was on a rickshaw recently in India, where they are past-masters at it; and the Poms were sucked in holus bolus and had their heads completely done in by Straya's very clever "psych-war" that was guaranteed to produce mental disintegration, despite the sledging not getting too out of hand, except for a bit of light-hearted banter...e.g. Smiffy v Jimmy Anderson discussing the state of the scoreboard in Adelbrain [Aleem Dar adjudicating].
What about the Poms just being not up to standard as the hinge point?
Plainly not good enough.
Attack? Poor, too slow. Bats? Took 'em until the third game to get a ton. Field? Below average. Minds? Gorn.
Out-played and out-foxed in every department there is.
Series over.
The epoch-ending of the WACA as a test match venue is something that cannot be let go without comment.
The Western Australian Cricket Association Ground has been there literally forever, and remains the last genuine cricket ground in the country [a high wide and handsome hill with a higgeldy-piggeldy collection of odd little old grandstands] with perhaps the exception of Bellerive Oval [whatever happened to the old TCA Ground?].
While it will apparently remain as a first-class ground for the time being, no money has been spent on it in decades - Joisus, even the pitch covers come apart after long periods of disuse - and in time it will be built over with high-rise flats, mark my words.
Never mind the black and white images of Lillee taking wickets at one end and Thommo making them jump at the other, as the chin music hummed off a "pacey WACA wicket".
Thing of the past.
The powers that be say it's too small at a notional capacity of 24,500, and apart from "high ranking teams", Perth will now not have a test match every summer, as the "lower ranking teams" test matches will be moved to Hobart.
You've been dudded without knowing it, Perth.
They will fill their new 60 thousand seater Superdome to the brim every weekend in winter, directly rivalling that other football stadium known as the Adelaide Oval, but test cricket has been consigned to the dust bin of homogenised all-seated stadia with same same only different drop-in pitches world-wide, on instruction from those on high at the ICC.
Sad, for any weary ol' nostalgic traditionalist; bloody ruined it.
Been to the WACA, once, almost exactly 31 years ago.
That's ancient history now, but the ground's barely changed since.
While the match in question is pretty much lost in the mists of time, it was a picture post-card perfect Perth day if memory serves, warm with little fluffy clouds and that unique light that reflects off the Indian Ocean, the Doctor was in, and found myself watching from one of those charming old white-washed thick wicker chaise-lounge arrangements on the balcony of a bar overlooking the ground attached to the old Western Australian Cricketer's Club sucking free ice cold Emu Bitter out of cans and smoking my head off on sponsor's product.
By invitation only...on my own in a joint full of well dressed strangers on the take, all yabbering their heads off, and it got pretty messy, to be sure.
Essentially a large "private box" before there was even such a thing, well, free piss, anyway, and not too many seats, either.
Somehow recall that it was very bright too - the first time the brand spanking new floodlights had been switched on?
Can't remember, who knows, but even so there was no shortage of shady places to lurk in.
And they were still mucking about putting in the new Lillee-Marsh stand; thinking it was meant to be open [?] but it was certainly the last major building project there
Thank Christ there was no need for anything to spill out over onto the hill, which as usual got rather raucous, but then the mob grog groaned; can't remember that much really, but it was that sort of atmos late in the day with no booze limits on full strength gear when the result is forgone against you and fist fights start to break out for alternative entertainment, and the cops move in to the cries of the crowd howling derision and calling for more.
And old-school one-day game - they'd only been playing in pyjama's for eight years - at an old-school ground, even then.
Told him not to, but the Stats Guru has been going through his filing cabinet of index cards and he reckons it was the 4th of January 1987...Australia v West Indies, Benson & Hedges Challenge Cup.
The deity-like Sir Vivian Richards was in charge of the Windies, and batting first, Gordon Greenwich tonked up an even ton, in what was a competitive 8/255 in those days, with Scoob O'Donell the best of the Aussie bowlers working The Doctor to good effect.
So far, so good.
Then the memories started flooding back - the Green & Gold were utterly destroyed without mercy by a fearsome pace attack of J Garner, CA Walsh, and MA Holding - Roger Harper was the spinner and even Larry Gomes and Gus Logie took catches in the field - and the evening session ended all-of-a-sudden soon after sunset, with Straya all out for 91, about 15 overs short.
Only the young "The Iceman" Waugh and Sundries made double figures, while the Keg on Legs, Marsh Snr, Deano Jones, A.B., and Glenn Bishop failed miserably with the willow and were all out at 5/32.
Didn't help when Boony had his stumps seriously rearranged neck and crop by Joel steaming in off the long run to make it 1/4 for a start off.
On recollection, it was a serious disappointment.
And very sincerely doubt now, wracking my brain, that such a thorough thwacking of a thrashing has been graced with my presence before or since.
Well, that's the way it was on my one and only day at the lovely old dump, as far as it goes.
So, bye bye WACA, it was nice knowing you.
Of more immediate interest on the not too distant horizon is the fact that Sydney hasn't hosted a live Ashes rubber in 23 years now.
Little wonder really, the Poms have never been able to adapt to the conditions let alone master them - never will - the vastness of the Wide Brown Land is way beyond them.
At what point do we lose interest?
Never!
Poms collapse in a screaming heap in Melbun!
Start chanting [to the tune of Robbie Burns' 1788 corker Auld Lang Syne] "5-nil! 5-nil! 5-nil! 5-nil! 5-nil! 5-nil! 5-nil! 5-nil! 5-nil! 5-nil! 5-nil! 5-nil! 5-nil! 5-nil!"
Bugger the dead rubber, odds on you have to be at the SCG on Day 5, Monday the 8th of January, 2018, [if not earlier] for the Poms' miserable denouement and to kick their arses all the way back home to their Mumsies for a good cry.
Cricket is a hard, cruel game and all is right with the world.
Craves.
