Tour Diary

Forgive me while I make a bid for Private Eye's Pseud's Corner, but as a wannabee writer, I've always been a sucker for a bit of onomatopoeia. You know the construction I’m talking about - a word or phrase that imitates the sound it is representing: "The moan of doves in immemorial elms and the murmurings of innumerable bees,” as Alfred Lord Tennyson might have put it.

But let’s cut the classical crap. We’re in Australia now, and so there’s no need for such highfalutin examples. Especially not when we are talking about the most satisfyingly named sporting venue in the world. I refer, of course, to the WACA ground in Perth.

Almost 24 hours after they wrapped up the tour game, one of the Indians was still bowling in the middle at Sedgars Park. Anil Kumble played no part in the 96-run win over Rest of South Africa, and he bounded in for half an hour, with Dinesh Karthik keeping wicket. After that, Karthik batted for a few minutes as Kumble went through the repertoire in preparation for the first Test.

On the other side of the pavilion, Rahul Dravid was first into the nets against the bowling machine, showing little signs of discomfort ahead of a match where his presence will be absolutely crucial. At an adjacent net, Virender Sehwag practised against two local boys and Eduan Roos, who once represented North West Under-19s and is now senior cricket writer for Rapport, a Sunday newspaper in Afrikaans. It wasn’t quite adequate preparation for Makhaya and friends, but after minimal time in the middle in this game, any bat on ball will probably be beneficial.

Lilac Hill lies a half-hour’s drive from the centre of Perth, amid the fringes of the region’s wine industry. The ground is nestled on a tree-lined kink of the Swan River, and is the sort of place that evokes images of bucolic tranquillity. For English tourists, however, such appearances are invariably deceptive. In this fixture, there is always trouble in paradise.

“There’s no such thing as a festival game,” said Alec Stewart after England‘s latest mugging of the tour - a seven-wicket thrashing at the hands of a dervish-bladed Luke Ronchi. Stewart, England’s captain and top-scorer for the day, was still fresh as a daisy despite having played virtually no cricket since his retirement three years ago. That was more than could be said for the rest of his bedraggled team, who had various layers of ring-rustiness scoured off them in the course of the match.

Adelaide awoke this morning with a massive hangover. At least, I assume it did, because nothing else could quite explain how quiet the city was on the morning after the night before. The streets seemed empty, aside from a few bewildered Englishmen standing out from the (lack of) crowd in their “Douglas Jardine - Ashes hero” T-shirts, hoping against hope that everything they’d just witnessed had all been a bad dream.

I’d imagined this moment ever since I first starting watching Ashes routs. What would it be like, I wondered, to be Pom Down Under, on the day after England had slumped to one of their most wretched defeats in history? The answer surprised me, because the result had surprised everyone. Australia, it seemed, was too shocked even to gloat.

The headline on The Age summed up the mood perfectly. “How could it be?” they asked, after watching their respected opponents regress by approximately 16 years in an imitation of Graham Gooch’s domino-ralliers of 1990-91. To a connoisseur of English batting disasters, nothing quite topped the events at Melbourne on that trip - until now.

Seldom can one man have so dominated a training session. Sourav Ganguly arrived 90 minutes after everyone else, having driven straight from Oliver Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg, barely pausing to drop off his bags at the Willows Hotel. And though both Rahul Dravid, the captain, and Sachin Tendulkar are on the mend, everyone gathered at the outdoor nets was waiting for just one man.

He made his entrance quietly, shook some hands, exchanged pleasantries, padded up, and then went across to do some stretches under Greg King's supervision. And just before he made the acquaintance of the bowling machine, Anil Kumble had a quiet word and a smile for him.

At one in the afternoon, it was doubtful whether the Pro20 game would take place at all, with a leaden sky and distant rumblings of thunder. But by the time we arrived at the ground, an hour before the scheduled start, most of the dark clouds had vanished, and a carnival atmosphere was slowly being built up. Cheerleaders dressed in blue set the tone, and a Bollywood-style dance routine and the national anthems roused a less-than-capacity crowd to fever pitch as the teams walked out to commence the game.

There were ironical cheers when Graeme Smith middled the first ball from Zaheer Khan. His travails have been well documented, and though he managed 16 today, the manner of his dismissal - shuffling across to be struck in line - had all the inevitability of a sunset in the west. Zaheer was in sensational form, conceding just 15, and by the time he completed his spell, India were right on top. Justin Kemp and Albie Morkel briefly had the home fans up on their feet, but all the Indian bowlers contributed significantly in restricting the final total to 126.

St. George's Park is South Africa's oldest venue, the first ground outside of England and Australia to host an international game. It was also where Ali Bacher's world-beating side had its last hurrah, completing a 4-0 rout of Bill Lawry's Australians before more than two decades of isolation imbued them with near mythical status.

For some of the Indian fans I met before the match started, this was a chance to buck a miserable historical trend. One fan had seen all of India's three one-day matches here, dating back to 1992-93, and been disappointed every time. The last defeat was the most humiliating, with luminaries like Joseph Angara and Thomas Odoyo sending them plummeting to a 70-run defeat.

I don’t think I can ever have been so pleased to hear the Barmy Army in full cry than I was on that final morning at Brisbane. “E-verywhere we go-oh!” came the chorus, just as Kevin Pietersen, England’s last hope, was dispatched by the fourth ball of the day. “The pe-ople want to know-oh!” they continued, in defiance of all evidence to the contrary. “Whooo we are-ah”, they blundered on, as the teeth of 100 journalists were set indisputably on edge.

They are noisy, nauseating, and unspeakably tuneless, and when you’ve heard that witless chorus once, you’ve heard it 1000 times - usually when you are right on deadline and desperate for some peace and quiet. And yet, for the first (but on today’s evidence, maybe not the only) time in my life, I was delighted to hear them break into song. Never mind the noise pollution, it was a victory for free speech, free spirits and futility - which, like kittens and warm-woollen mittens, are a few of my favourite things.

But if we thought the nonsenses at the Gabba had been forgotten amid the tranquillity of the Adelaide Oval, then today’s press release from Cricket Australia has confirmed once again that, in this country, good humour is an item to be surrendered at all turnstiles. “Cricket Australia clarifies Barmy Army trumpet,” read the improbable headline, followed by 16 (sixteen!) paragraphs of justification for the continued expulsion of the Army’s cause célèbre, Bill Cooper, and his meddlesome brass instrument.

Only now do I feel I've arrived in Australia. Don't get me wrong. I really enjoyed my time in Queensland (even though the cricket was desperate). I had a nice day on the beach to recover from my jetlag, my digs were impeccable throughout, and the native flora and fauna seemed to queue up to pay me a visit. I saw a possum on the verandah and a family of kangaroos in the park. We passed a gumtree plantation on the way from the airport and I got squawked at by a flock of rainbow parakeets as I stepped out of the car. Had I wanted to cuddle a koala, I could have made a quick detour to the Lone Pine Sanctuary, some ten minutes down the road. But that's not really my scene.

But in spite of this sensory bombardment, something had been missing throughout. Something obvious, but utterly overlooked as the chaos of the cricket unfolded. It's only now, as I sit in the press box at the Adelaide Oval, watching the sun setting on the famous old scoreboard, as the earthy red roof of the Sir Edwin Smith stand begins to turn deep pink in the fading light, that I've realised what it is. It's context, stupid!

You see, I have lived and breathed the last four Ashes tours, from Gooch's disaster in 1990-91 through Atherton's disaster in 1994-95 to Hussain's disaster in 2002-03, and in that time, the nuances of each venue have become inscribed on my soul. Melbourne's Great Southern Stand, The Fremantle Doctor, the Ladies Pavilion at Sydney. But up at the Gabba, I was left completely non-plussed. Where was the history, except in rather indifferent snippets on the walls. Where was the old dog track of my mind's eye, except beneath a ton of concrete.