Private Steer and the Gabba faithful

Usually there is not much point asking a Gabba spectator for their one-eyed view of their favourite player. As sure as the jacaranda and poinciana trees flower purple and red in November, Queenslanders will push for their own. During the opening four days straw polls were stuck between the locals Matt Hayden and Mick Kasprowicz.

Some swinging voters were swayed briefly by the brilliance of Michael Clarke and Glenn McGrath, but the overwhelming feeling was that Kasprowicz's four first-innings wickets were from heaven and Hayden's lbw decision was certainly dodgy. They will bleed the maroon of their state's caps, but will never be convinced they speak the bull of their mascot.

One supporter's sign yelled "Bring back Bichel", who was dropped last summer and missed out on a national contract in April. Previous selection injustices were also remembered. "Haydos and Kasper are my favourites because it's been so hard for them," says Matty Jones, a cricket-loving pharmaceutical sales rep sitting in the Northern Stand. A local newspaper once encouraged readers to fax Cricket Australia's office in a campaign to "Get Matt a bat".

Queensland currently has two members on the selection panel in Trevor Hohns, the chairman, and Allan Border, and the bias complaints now often come from southern states when the close calls go north. "There's always a home state feeling," says Jones, "but I can still see Queenslanders saying everyone else is favoured."

His mate Solomon Rowland, a former amateur boxer with an aversion to taking punches, was one of the few dissenting voices when he picked Ricky Ponting. "I like him because he got into a fight at the Bourbon and Beefstake bar in Sydney and went on to captain Australia," he says. "And because he's nicknamed 'Punter'." The two mates wanted to go on the 2003 West Indies tour but was a few thousand dollars short. So they scanned the form like Ponting.

Jones is a committed betting man who convinced a not-so-wise Solomon to fork out A$500 on the nose of a young mare called Private Steer. She was favourite for the Magic Millions on the Gold Coast in January 2003 and would take them to the Caribbean. Instead she finished tenth, and the boys caught bits of the tour on television. Private Steer went on to win A$3.4 million in prizemoney, and has since lost twice. They head off to buy a beer, and some gladiators dressed in strategically-placed XXXX cartons stroll by.

The crowd of 45,903 by day three, already a ground record against New Zealand, has been industrious and creative throughout the match. But the views from the Cricketers' Club to the licensed areas are amazingly similar. In a corporate box at lunch after Clarke, from New South Wales, had spectacularly collected a century, the talk around the table was of the impressive Moreton Bay bugs and local prawns.

Queenslanders can take parochialism to a fanatical level.